Joseph Brodsky
On the death of Zhukov

Columns of grandsons, stiff at attention;
gun carriage, coffin, riderless horse.
Wind brings no sound of their glorious Russian
trumpets, their weeping trumpets of war.
Splendid regalia deck out the corpse:
thundering Zhukov rolls towrd death’s mansion.

As a commander, making walls crumble,
he held a sword less sharp than his foe’s.
Brilliant maneuvers across Volga flatlands
found him, like Pompey, fallen and humbled —
like Belisarius banned and disgraced.

How much dark blood, soldier’s blood did he spill then
on alien fields? Did he weep for his men?
As he lay dying, did he recall them —
swathed in white sheets at the end?
He gives no answer. What will he tell them,
meeting in hell? «We were fighting to win.»

Zhukov’s right arm, which once was enlisted
in a just cause, will battle no more.
Sleep! Russian history holds, as is fitting,
space for the exploits of those who, though bold,
marching triumphant through foreign cities,
trembled in terror when they came home.

Marshal! These words will be swallowed by Lethe,
utterly lost, like your rough soldier boots.
Still, take this tribute, though it is little,
to one who somehow — here I speak truth
plain and aloud — has saved our embattled
homeland. Drum, beat! And shriek out, bullfinch fife!

Translated by George L. Cline