Living land
For AnastassiyaKobzina and Ilia Solovyov, in memoriam
І
My grandfather died without a word about the war.
Without a word about the war my grandmother died.
On starvation and labor for the front
They let out a few harsh words, no more.
May 9 was the greatest of their holidays,
Their songs, their tears, without a word about the war.
" I will not talk, My Lord!
Never again, never again. We throw you
On the cart, and then, in the mass grave”.
The words of my grandmother, near her grave.
ІІ
In my bookshelves, under the bombardments,
My grandfather's medal-covered uniform,
His dagger (17 years old, Shcholkovo near Moscow,
Then the North Sea, many killed
In this land of ice, then, the singing,
Football, Kakhovka and Kyiv, the love of his life
Who makes me smile, even today),
The medals of my grandmother, daughter of war
(Childhood in the kolkhoz, everything for the front,
And a friendly German says "hide!",
In the Vinnytsa region a whole winter,
In the attic she hides, and ostarbeiters are taken away.
Then, the singing, and the socialism, and the crash,
And his research on Stalin's Great Famine),
They still stay together, with
Two sister republics, in the bookshelves,
Under the bombardments, then explode.
ІІІ
This winter land is alive, deep.
Not a word about the war, in their common grave.
The missile wakes them up as it did on the Babi Yar sanctuary,
And they come out of the other world, but I know,
They are not on the other side, they join
Ours. And my grandmother persists
With the volunteers, and my grandfather, with the sailors,
On our side, those who follow the Cossacks,
Those who ignore fear and throw themselves
Unprotected on tanks, in the steppes,
As in the time of the Hellenes, on this old land
Where "Glory!" falls, thunder after thunder.
ІV
This winter land is still alive, so far away.
My grandfather from Shcholkovo fights,
My grandmother from Haysyn persists,
Behind them, darkness upon darkness,
Lights upon lights, worlds after worlds,
Resound, bloodied, on the crosses grow
The roses of Heavenly Jerusalem,
Their blood unites Constantinople and Kyiv,
The Rubedo of resurrected cities,
Century after century, temple after temple,
To water our common tree,
Towards a spring, finally recognizable.
7.ІІІ.22, Kyiv
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