War Poems

By Boris Khersonsky

#1

That kind of time — you read prayers and frontline
reports — where did our troops retreat, where did they advance.
How many were carried away by Death? Oh, this is not the first
time we see the beastly Russia’s true face.

One day she pretends to be Lenin, the next, a dry–armed Koba,*
Now she hides under a mask of an underground dwarf.
But she remains the same, toothy, and narrow–browed.
She yearns for victories and cannot stay home.

And what a home, with steel bars on all windows.
With screaming guards. With a jailer’s all–seeing eye.
And the Heavenly Doctor looks on — everyone is slightly ill,
nothing can help, bad heredity can’t be cured.

In that ugly mix — genes of masters and serfs —
Is that Pushkin with a white feather? Or Vysotsky with his guitar?
No Cheburashka here for you and no Crocodile Ghena.
Only lies and violence — always together — walk hand in hand.

And all she wants is control, she wants to drag you into her lair,
To besmirch black dates of the calendar with the innocents’
blood,
To accrue deadly sins for her obituary and her epilogue,
And to settle the score with Ukraine at last.

How to pray now? Light a church candle.
Open your Psalter at a random page.
Their jaws will be broken. Their guns will misfire.
And the response will roll to their border like a crashing tide.

……………..

* Koba — Stalin’s nickname.

#2

Spring began with death. The snow had melted. In a huge
puddle,
the cathedral, turned into a club, was reflected upside down.}
People wept. They feared it would get worse.
The whole unhappy country mourned a paranoid and murderous
man.

The architect of the great victory. The begetter of great plans.
The digger of canals. The planter of forest belts.
The people were good at seeing off their tyrants with tears.
What did they have more of — tears or fears? Good question.

They welcomed the new era, with their belts tightened.}
They amnestied convicts and sent them off for raspberries from
the camps.
They sighed with relief. They wept. They feared it would get
worse.
Especially for the doctors. Especially for the Jews.

Factories closed. Instead of the usual smoke,
Sirens of mourning issued from chimneys’ red brick.
Death is inevitable. A tyrant’s death is essential.
The upside–down reflection of the cathedral that was now a club

Translated from the Russian by Nina Kossman

February 12, 2022

It’s feels weird — but these could be our last days of peace.
Friends are abandoning us. We are staying alone
to face, or rather, to see the enemy’s mouth, his snout.
Will he really step into this trap?
Does he really want to stuff his mouth with our soil?
Is his best friend a subterranean mole, not a wolf ?
Is the earth that hungry for blood?
The vampire is insatiable and gentle like a calf,
only it doesn’t suck milk, he prefers to suck blood from veins,
so that he gets asked later — in what regiment he had served
so that his chest is all covered with orders, post–mortem.
The body decayed; the soul remained all alone.
What is there for it to do on the battlefield ? But, there is no way
to heaven.
It is so scary to be thinking — these could be the last days of peace.

Translated from the Russian by Anna Halberstadt