Alexander Tvardovsky
Killed me under the Rzhev...

Killed me under the Rzhev,
In the nameless swamp,
In the fifth company, on the left side,
When the cruel raid is.
I did not hear the burst,
I have not seen that flash —
Exactly in the precipe from the steep —
And neither a bottom nor a cover.
There are nor a buttonhole, nor a stripe
From my smock
And in all around the world,
Until the end of its days,
I am — there the blind roots
Looking for a food in the dark;
I am — there the rye with the dust cloud
Walks on the hill;
I am — there is the cry of a cock
At the dawn on the dew;
I am — there your cars
Tear the air on the highway;
Where the river spins the grasses
By the blade of a grass to the blade of a grass —
There, somewhere
Even the mother did not come on the wake.

Calculate, live men,
How much time ago
The Stalingrad was named suddenly
On the front for the first time.
The front burned, no mute,
As the scar on the body.
Killed me and I do not know,
Either the Rzhev is our finally?
Do hold our guard
There, in the Middle Don?..
This month was terrible,
All was on the stake.
Was really the Don to the autumn
Already after him
And he torn though by the wheels
To the Volga?
No it is not true. That order
The enemy did not win!
No, well, no! And otherwise,
Even to the dead man — how to be?
And the dead, mute men,
Have the one consolation:
We fell for the motherland,
But it is — cared.
Our eyes dim out,
The heart flame ashes out,
On the ground, to recall
Do not call us.
We do not wear
Our fighting reward.
To you — all of this, live men.
To us — the one consolation:
That is not in vain
We fight for the Motherland.
Let our voice is not heard —
You need to know it.
You have should, brothers,
To stand like a wall,
Indeed the curse of the dead men —
This punishment is terrible.
Given this terrible right
To us forever —
And it is for us —
This is a bitter right.
Buried me without a grave
In the summer, in the forty-two year.
All of that was then,
The death deprive me.
All that may be, for a long time
You have familiar and clear
But let it be
According to our faith.

Brothers, may be you
And do not lost the Don,
And die in the rear of Moscow
For it.
And hastily you dig the trenches
In the Zavolzhskaya far side,
And enter with the fight
Till the European limit.
It is enough to know to us,
That was, no a doubt,
That last inch
On the military road.
That last inch,
If to leave that,
Then the foot step back
To put nowhere.
That feature of the depth is,
The flame of the forges of the Urals
Rose for that
Behind your back.
And you turn the enemy
On the west, back.
Maybe, named-brother,
And taken Smolensk already?
And you fight the enemy
On the other line,
Perhaps you approaches
Already to the boundary!
Maybe... Yes let fulfilled
The word of the holy oath! —
Really the Berlin was, if you remember,
Called at the Moscow.
Brothers, now trampling
The fortress of the enemy land,
If the dead, fallen men would
Just would can cry!
If the victorious discharge would
Us, the mute and the deaf men,
Us, that committed to the eternity,
Revived on a moment —
Oh, faithful companions,
Only then You would comprehend
Your immeasurable happiness
Completely on the war.
In it, in that happiness,
Our indisputable blood part,
Our, ragged by the death,
Faith, hate, passion.
Our all! We do not deceit
We are in a tough fight,
Giving all, do not rest
Nothing to ourself.

All lists on you
Forever no in a term.
This voice is your conceivable
And to the living men no in the reproach.
Brothers,
We did not know the differences in this war:
Those that are alive, that fell —
We were on a par.
And no one in front of us
From the living men is not in a debt,
Who picked the flag up
From our arms on the run,
That do for the sacred deal,
For the Soviet regime
By this way, can be, accurately
To fall on a step further.
Killed me under the Rzhev,
Be that still near the Moscow.
Somewhere, warriors, where are you,
Who is live rest?
Who is in the cities of millions,
In the villages, in the family home?
Who is in the fighting garrisons
On no our land?
Ah, our or a stranger land,
All in the flowers or in the snow...
I bequeath the life to you —
What I can more?
I bequeath in that life
You will be happy
And continue serve with the honor
To your native homeland.
Grieving — proudly,
No sloping the head,
Rejoice — no boastfully
In the hour of the most victory.
And cherish it faithfully,
Brothers, your happiness —
In memory of the brother-soldier,
That was dead for it.

Translated by Yuri Starostin