For A Lost Submariner . . .


I will remember you Dmitry Staroseltsev
in these days of August and beyond.

Working daily among warehouse clutter and grime
I tune the radio to clinical, speculative voices;
to speech strangely devoid of names and stories.
Just talk instead of a catastrophe's cause;
a military's costly pride; a people's outrage.

The echo of tapping from inside the sunken hull
gives me pause in my work
to stare fixedly at an unseen horizon.

But on the third day comes word of silence
and I feel the weight of stone
tied to hope's ascent from the depths.

When not long after I see your face in the paper
I am struck by the intensity of your questioning gaze,
the almost sullen, bitter line of your mouth.
In my eyes you say to us all:
How many young lives must be lost?
How many more will be sacrificed?

I pray, Dmitry Staroseltsev,
that your noble vulnerability
and serene expression of indictment
remain as a watermark
upon our collective consciousness.

Let your expression haunt us
Let it remind us of our failure in preventing
the poison of nationalism and militarism
from stilling the hearts of the young.

Your coffin now is a leviathan,
silent on the remnants of ancient life.
A leviathan at peace in its brokenness
and freed from its relentless pursuit of war.

Your hallowed ground is a patch of sea
within the watery halo of the world,
a realm each day drawn closer
to winter's bitter, numbing breast.

Yet still I remember you Dmitry Staroseltsev
in these last days of summer and beyond
as your young body floats gently entombed
while life's rich contours wait
with fading hope for your embrace,
and the wilting blooms of possibility
let fall their despairing heads.


Michael J. Bayly

August 30, 2000



On August 12, 2000, the Russian submarine Kursk experienced a massive internal explosion while engaged in military exercises below the surface of the Barents Sea. Within minutes all contact with the Kursk was lost as the vessel plunged to the seabed 354 feet below. Dmitry Staroseltsev was one of the 118 men on board the Kursk.

A 20-year-old from southern Russia, Dmitry, according to his mother, Valentina, escaped "the worst nightmare of Russian mothers" - being sent to war-torn Chechnya - by winning a prestigious spot aboard the Kursk. "We thought the submarine was so safe," she told reporters in the days after the disaster.

For three days after the submarine plummeted to the ocean floor, sounds of faint tapping were audible from inside the hull, raising hopes that crew members remained alive and that a rescue attempt was possible. Yet the Russian navy proved ill-prepared to launch such an attempt and equally slow to respond to offers of help from Britain and Norway.

On August 16, the sounds from within the stranded vessel ceased. "All this news is like a little stab, followed by a little stab," Dmitry's mother said. "It would be better if it happened all at once." Of her trapped son, Valentina declared: "I think maybe he is lying silently. As a mother, I hope he is calm. The main thing is not to panic."

On August 19, a Norweigan rescue crew, summoned far too late according to many Russians, managed to open the Kursk's rear escape hatch and reported that the entire vessel was flooded. Within hours the Russian government conceded that all crew members were dead.

As this tragic course of events unfolded I found myself drawn to a picture of Dmitry Staroseltsev published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on August 17, 2000. It was in response to this haunting image and to the Kurst disaster that I wrote For A Lost Submariner. And it is because of events like this and lost lives like Dmitry's that I vow to continue to work towards the day when it will be inconceivable to consider placing the lives of young men, of mothers' sons, in situations of danger and violence for the sake of the false gods of "national security" and militarism. May that day come soon.


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