Mikhail Svetlov
The Italian

Black cross on the Italian’s bosom,
With no chasing, or pattern, or gloss on,
By poor family handed down,
Heirloom worn by the only son.

Young and carefree native of Napoli,
Why come here to die so unhappily?
What strange restlessness drove you away
From the shores of that famous bay?

I, who killed you out here on the plain, oh
How I dreamed of a distant volcano!
How I yearned, by the banks of the Volga,
For one trip on the bay in a gondola!

I didn’t come to rob with violence,
Steal their sky away from the Italians!
No lead flew from the gun in my hand
Over Raphael’s holy land!

I fired here, on my own home ground,
Justly proud of myself and my friends!
Here, where legends about our nation
Are not handed down in translation.

Did some foreigner, man of learning,
Map the Don with its twistings and turnings?
What did you plough and what did you sow
Here in Russia-“Non sono Ruso!”

No! You came in a railway carriage,
Sent to colonise, plunder and pillage,
That the cross your family prized
Might grow up to gravestone size...

I’m not having my country, my own land,
Shipped to somebody else’s homeland!
So I shoot-and no justice is higher
Than the pistol bullet I fire!

No, you never lived here by right!
But all over the steppe so white —
Glazed the blue of Italian skies
In the stare of those dead men’s eyes...

Translated by Alex Miller