Boris Slutsky
The Hospital

Still the ‘Messerschmitts’ claw at the heart,
Still the needles go out of their mind,
Still the ear rings with hurras.
The Russian “Hurra-rarara!”
In twenty-syllable lines.
Here, in a former village church turned club,
We lie under labor charts,
But in the corner there’s a fusty smell of God —
The village priest ought to be about!
Anathema is powerful though belief is not firm.
The curse-invoking priest ought to be here in person!
What frescoes shine in the corner!
Paradise sings here, hell sets up a fearful howl!
On the unheated earthen floor
A prisoner lies with a stomach wound.
Under the frescoes in an unheated corner
An injured Unteroffizier lies on the floor.
Opposite on a low trestle bed
A young battalion commander is dying,
Decorations glitter on his jacket.
He is... disturbing... the silence.
He cries out.
(In a whisper — the way was the dying cry.)
He demands, as an officer, as a Russian.
As a man, that in this last hour of his life,
The green, red-haired, rusty Prussian
Should not be allowed to die among us!
He fingers, fingers his decorations,
Smoothes, tugs at his jacket,
And weeps, weeps bitterly that
This request has not been met.
And two steps away, in an unheated corner.
Lies the injured NCO on the floor.
And the orderly removes him, unprotesting.
Away to some distant room,
So that he should not disturb
Our bright deaths with his dark one.
And again quiet descends
And the soldiers explain to a new recruit:
"That's what the war's like in this place!
Clearly you don't approve —
Try fighting the war in your own way!"

Translated by Daniel Weissbort