to Valentina Serova
The major brought the boy out on the gun;
His mother dead, unwept, no time for tears.
He was a child for whom the last ten days
In this world or the next will count as years.
They brought him from the fortress, Brest-Litovsk,
Bullets had scarred and scratched the battered gun;
His father had decided there was nowhere
A safer place of refuge for his son.
The gun was shattered and the father wounded,
And fastened on, to hold him in the night,
The grey-haired child was sleeping on the carriage,
Holding his bedtime plaything to him tight.
We met him sleeping as we came from Russia;
He woke, and waved, as troops went down the track.
You say that I should leave this task to others —
That I've been there and now I should come back.
You only know this misery from hearsay!
We saw it, and our hearts will never mend!
Whoever saw that little boy's condition
Will not come home again until the end.
I have to see, with those same eyes that saw him —
— Those eyes that wept there, in the dust of war —
I have to see that child return there with us,
And kiss the ground on which he lived before.
For everything which you and I have valued,
The law of war insists we have to fight!
My home is now no longer where it was, dear —
It's where that child has lost his home tonight.
Майор привез мальчишку на лафете.
Погибла мать. Сын не простился с ней.
За десять лет на том и этом свете
Ему зачтутся эти десять дней.
Его везли из крепости, из Бреста.
Был исцарапан пулями лафет.
Отцу казалось, что надежней места
Отныне в мире для ребенка нет.
Отец был ранен, и разбита пушка.
Привязанный к щиту, чтоб не упал,
Прижав к груди заснувшую игрушку,
Седой мальчишка на лафете спал.
Мы шли ему навстречу из России.
Проснувшись, он махал войскам рукой...
Ты говоришь, что есть еще другие,
Что я там был и мне пора домой...
Ты это горе знаешь понаслышке,
А нам оно оборвало сердца.
Кто раз увидел этого мальчишку,
Домой прийти не сможет до конца.
Я должен видеть теми же глазами,
Которыми я плакал там, в пыли,
Как тот мальчишка возвратится с нами
И поцелует горсть своей земли.
За все, чем мы с тобою дорожили,
Призвал нас к бою воинский закон.
Теперь мой дом не там, где прежде жили,
А там, где отнят у мальчишки он.
«Est in arundineis modulatio musica ripis. The sea is harmony. / Shapely in debate, all elements cohere. / Rustling in the river's reeds, / musical designs inhere. Imperturbable form is the outward sign / of nature's utter consonance. / Only our spectral liberty / imparts a sense of dis...»
«She was sitting on the floor / sorting letters which were old, / holding them before she threw them out / like ash gone cold. Her look was strange / while she held those pages she knew so well, / as if she were a soul which peered down / at its abandoned shell. So many irreversible eve...»
«Today it's not the flesh — the spirit is laid bare. / Man longs in desperation. / He strives to leave the darkness for the light, / protesting and rebelling once he's there. Through non-belief he's dry and burned, / he tolerates what man should never bear, / aware at every step that he ...»
«What a summer! Such a season! / It's got to be pure magic. / How, I wonder, have we earned this / for no apparent reason? In some alarm my eyes are meeting / this glitter and this light. / Is someone poking fun at us? / Where is the source of such a greeting? Ah, it's like a youthful ...»