Konstantin Simonov
Twenty years later

The village fires were dying down.
All night we heard the cannonade,
No longer starting at the sound,
As if that’s how the world was made.

A little girl of five or so —
A bluebell on a broken stalk —
Was wandering, lost and mute from shock,
Between our sabres and boots below.

She was too small to reach our spurs,
And we leaned down to her and asked
Where she came from, which house was hers,
What happened in that holocaust.

I then picked up and rocked the child,
I spoke to her with tenderness,
But in her blue eyes, stark and wide,
That fire forever seemed impressed.

A little wild thing, she held on to
My sheepskin cloak in blind despair,
That tiny blue coal always smouldering
Unquenchably, deep in her stare.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Years later, on a night in May,
A dreamy night with blossoms fragrant,
A woman, none of us can say
He’s ever known, a total stranger,

Might by a man be asked, a man
Who’s never known us, stranger also:
“What makes you look so sad and wan,
This change of mood — am I its cause, dear?”

She’ll start as from a sudden blow,
And in her eyes, as it had then,
That fire, twenty years ago,
Will be reflected once again.

“No, dearest, no." As in a dream
She sees the burning homes and us,
The horsemen that we once had been,
Come flying in a cloud of dust.

And from the village smoke still curls.
The bugle sounds, a cavalryman
On to his saddle lifts the girl
And with his wide cloak shields from harm...

Translated by Olga Shartse