Petrograd

And there was stormy silence in that city,
A silence of the unborn where it moved
In darkness, piteous, but without pity,
Tearing the body that held it, the heart that loved.
Her sides were shaken with the weight she bore,
Dwarfing, with the huge shadow that it threw,
Hunger and empty death and puny war:
The red hour loomed. The lunging city knew.
Her cry smote on the dawn and she was mute;
Tossing in the bewildered agony
Of that impatient and impeded birth:
She was alone as any groaning brute.
Savage in solitary vicrory,
She challenges the leagued imperial earth.