Olga Bergholz
But I keep remembering one of them...

But I keep remembering one of them,
that first spring of the blockade…

How many rusty beds and bunks
littered the streets those days!
They hunched down among the ruins
senselessly trying to screen them.
Their sombre, bony dance twirled
everywhere the ground was being dug for vegetables…
And for no particular reason they gathered
here and there on the embankment –
                                                          dark and bare,
as though Dystrophia, the enemy,
wanted a place to rest up nights.

You walk, you count – you do not count…
Their former owners cannot sleep on tem – they cannot!
The sovereign earth tends those beds
and covers them with an iron down…

How many times I tugged at your hearts
with my implacable inventory of losses.
I spoke out loud of the most terrible things,
which even in a whisper are not spoken of.
But Leningrad,
                        my father,
                                        home,
                                                  life’s path,
sending me ever into new terrains,
you say to me:
                        “Do not forget – that’s all!”
And as you see now:
                         I have not forgotten.