Hail to you, forgotten Goddess of History,
With your rocket-shell retinue, slaughtered soldiery!
We recognise you – still incipent – that day of fear,
When caterpillar treads and helicopters cross the border.
Then we grow accustomed to your rule. At first:
A high-rise’s ruptured chest, trees ablaze on the coast,
Blasted train junctions, the endless steppes’ theatre
Where, mired in black earth, Mazepa was cursed by Peter.
For Death is still young. She needs agility, time –
To train, master her craft – slowly takes aim,
Flails for a while: the body greeted by shrapnel
Only after the fifth try – after, a dead lull falls.
A drone traces an invisible path in the air.
The twenty-year-old guard slowly leads an elder
Behind a fence’s shelter – what matter he’s a civilian –
For both, the last few metres will only lengthen.
A pea coat’s owner abandons one site of ruin –
Occupies another. A satellite docked in the heavens
Impassively looks on. Cannons blast a nitrogen cistern:
Ten blocks have been taken – gloria nostra aeterna.
How distant the harbours and train stations of salvation!
Facing the checkpoint: friend or foe? It’s unknown –
Will they shoot or let you go? Chickens left by gates
For looters, goats loose in yards – turn the gaze
To the map with unmarked Trostyanka, Merefa, Irpin –
With their torn-off roofs thrusting up through nettles,
And caught in the throat: the stench of those no longer,
While children learn to say “traitor”, “rifle”, “hunger”.
A bullet, not a seagull, incises the low tide’s line,
Beyond a broken window, a mirror reflects clear skies –
Descendants born in shelters will observe it with fear,
For not God’s kingdom, but a sky of nuclear threat is near.
Clotted blood stains. The bass and alto of explosions.
For every Thermopylae there will be an Ephialtes.
Bid them farewell – for honor or shame, you don’t know:
The path's cut off: in the end, the Medes will break through.
So then, Goddess of History, war remains war.
In a hostile city: a sunshine-struck boulevard.
A student under a linden grinds a cigarette into sand,
Repeats the old line: “How sweet it is to hate one’s fatherland”
And the soldier – his comrades won’t recall his patronym –
Subsists on stale air in the underground labyrinth,
Yet when his words cease, stone and concrete will repeat
The defiant ripost Cambronne hurled at his attackers.
Tomas Venclova was born in Lithuania in 1937. He has taken part in Lithuanian and Soviet dissident movements. His work has been translated into Russian by Joseph Brodsky and into Polish by Czeslaw Milosz. Books in English include The Junction: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe) and Winter Dialogue (Northwestern University Press). Today’s poem has been published in several European languages and this is its first English-language publication.
With your rocket-shell retinue, slaughtered soldiery!
We recognise you – still incipent – that day of fear,
When caterpillar treads and helicopters cross the border.
Then we grow accustomed to your rule. At first:
A high-rise’s ruptured chest, trees ablaze on the coast,
Blasted train junctions, the endless steppes’ theatre
Where, mired in black earth, Mazepa was cursed by Peter.
For Death is still young. She needs agility, time –
To train, master her craft – slowly takes aim,
Flails for a while: the body greeted by shrapnel
Only after the fifth try – after, a dead lull falls.
A drone traces an invisible path in the air.
The twenty-year-old guard slowly leads an elder
Behind a fence’s shelter – what matter he’s a civilian –
For both, the last few metres will only lengthen.
A pea coat’s owner abandons one site of ruin –
Occupies another. A satellite docked in the heavens
Impassively looks on. Cannons blast a nitrogen cistern:
Ten blocks have been taken – gloria nostra aeterna.
How distant the harbours and train stations of salvation!
Facing the checkpoint: friend or foe? It’s unknown –
Will they shoot or let you go? Chickens left by gates
For looters, goats loose in yards – turn the gaze
To the map with unmarked Trostyanka, Merefa, Irpin –
With their torn-off roofs thrusting up through nettles,
And caught in the throat: the stench of those no longer,
While children learn to say “traitor”, “rifle”, “hunger”.
A bullet, not a seagull, incises the low tide’s line,
Beyond a broken window, a mirror reflects clear skies –
Descendants born in shelters will observe it with fear,
For not God’s kingdom, but a sky of nuclear threat is near.
Clotted blood stains. The bass and alto of explosions.
For every Thermopylae there will be an Ephialtes.
Bid them farewell – for honor or shame, you don’t know:
The path's cut off: in the end, the Medes will break through.
So then, Goddess of History, war remains war.
In a hostile city: a sunshine-struck boulevard.
A student under a linden grinds a cigarette into sand,
Repeats the old line: “How sweet it is to hate one’s fatherland”
And the soldier – his comrades won’t recall his patronym –
Subsists on stale air in the underground labyrinth,
Yet when his words cease, stone and concrete will repeat
The defiant ripost Cambronne hurled at his attackers.
Tomas Venclova was born in Lithuania in 1937. He has taken part in Lithuanian and Soviet dissident movements. His work has been translated into Russian by Joseph Brodsky and into Polish by Czeslaw Milosz. Books in English include The Junction: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe) and Winter Dialogue (Northwestern University Press). Today’s poem has been published in several European languages and this is its first English-language publication.
