Kursk

One hundred and eighteen
submariners
submerged

the Kursk,
sulks
in hushed depths.
Fatal, floating in the blood-flushed cold,
drifting
in utero.

Silvered surface soft and slow
and yet below,
the flash
and muffled boom,

pulsing through
the hostile depths
heralding doom,

has all but ceased now
Abruptly,
the deep
claims,
the watery burden stifles.

What pressures in the noiceless
vast,
unlit, unknown
compare to the distance
between our worlds?