Konstantin Simonov
The English Military Cemetery at Sevastopol

Here neither yew nor holly graveyard graces.
Mysterious stones and marshes here are found,
And sun-burnt rusty cypresses in places
Are stuck like hatchets in the rocky ground.

And underneath their sparse and spindly cover,
Deep in the earth, beneath the limestone’s grey,
In regimented military formation,
Are British troops in finery’s array.

Bloom-burdened now the lilac bushes rustle,
The azure sky is rocked by branches’ sway,
And kneeling at the verge the old curator
The grass is cutting in the English way.

Once to the soldiers at their final station
A ship from England bearing flowers came,
She also carried red pantiles from Devon,
And hawthorn hedge, Crimean land to tame.

For soldiers in a foreign land sleep better
Where hills above their heads as they recline
Are neatly lined with English terracotta,
And round their headstones English grasses twine.

And on those headstones copper plates are gleaming
On dusty pyramids of garnet made —
Engraver in old England cut the details
Of soldiers’ dates, their rank and their brigade.

But ’ere these plates upon the ship were loaded,
No doubt afraid of spiteful foreign land,
Accounts of how their tragic lives had ended
In panic were inscribed in Russian hand.

A vagabond-translator tried ineptly
To find a way in Russian to express
A widow’s grief for husband’s death correctly,
Pathetic, inconsolable address:

“Here lies a sleeping sergeant. Of your mercy
Before this cross incline respectful head!”
Crimea is so far, so far away from
Beloved wives and brides of England’s dead.

A foreign country might abuse their soldier,
In ploughing land might cut his coffin through.
So listen! Do not dare, for sake of heaven!
And hear how wife and mother’s begging you!

But have no fear. Already dates are fading
On monuments to fathers here who bled.
Your soldiers rest here under cypress-shading.
We’ve never wrought our vengeance on the dead.

Translated by Rupert Moreton