Observation Post: Forward Area by Alun Lewis

The thorns are bleached and brittle,
The empty folds decay,
Rooftrees creak in the silence
Of inarticulate dismay.

Drought denudes the planting;
In the dry red heat
Dawn spills its ghostly water,
Black heads on the wheat.

Some evil presence quenches
The vagrant drunken theme
Of the swart and skinny goatherd
And the black goats of his dream.

A darker beast than poverty
Transfixed the crouching peasants there,
And tore the votive tablets down
And filled the children with such fear.

The cowdung fires guttered out,
The wizened women cried,
The bridegroom lay trembling,
And rigid the bride.

Love could be had for nothing.
And where is love now?
Gone with the shambling oxen,
Gone with the broken plough,
Death lives here now.

by Alun Lewis

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Беженцы (Refugees) by Ilya Krichevsky

On and on we go over steppes,
forests, swamps, and grasslands,
still yet a long, long way to go,
still yet many who will lie in ditches.
…
Fate is harsh: you there will go to the end,
you will not,
you will tell grandchildren all of it,
you will die as the dawn barely breaks,
blinded by a pistol’s fire.
But ours is to go on, and on, tearing calluses,
not eating, not sleeping, not drinking,
through forests, hills, and deaths –
in an open field!
To live is what we want, we want to live!

By Илья Маратович Кричевский
(Ilya Maratovich Krichevsky)
(3 February 1963 – 21 August 1991)
(1981)
translated by Albert C. Todd

Беженцы

 (фрагменты)
.
Мы идем и идем по степи,
По лесам, по болотам и травам.
Еще долго и много идти,
Еще многим лежать по канавам.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
Рок суров: кто дойдет, а кто нет,
И расскажешь ты внукам об этом,
Ты умрешь, как забрезжит рассвет,
Ослепленный огнем пистолета.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
Но идем мы, идем, раздирая мозоли,
Нам не есть, нам не спать, нам не пить,
Смерть везде, смерть в лесу, за холмом, в чистом поле…
Как смертельно нам хочется, хочется жить!
. . . .

.

Additional information: I was only able to find a fragmented version of the poem in Russian but it matches the English translation I had as reference. It is possible it was always intended to be in that form but any help on clarifying the matter would be appreciated as there is so little information on him in English.

His only collection of poetry Красные бесы (Red Devils) was published in Kyiv during 1992.

Krichevsky died on 21 August 1991, during the Soviet coup d’état attempt.

On 24 August 1991, by the decree of the President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, “for courage and civic valour shown in the defence of democracy and the constitutional order of the USSR“, Krichevsky was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star Medal (No. 11659).

Gorbechev also decreed that the  families of the three defenders Dmitry Komar, Ilya Krichevsky and Vladimir Usov would receive a one-time award of 250 rubles each and a Zhiguli car from VAZ. Later, by decree of Boris Yeltsin, Krichevksy was posthumously awarded  the second ever “Defender of Free Russia” medal.

He was a Jewish Russian and there is an interesting story regarding his funeral. It was held on the sabbath, when no work or activities outside the home should be done, but Yeltsin insisted. It is speculated this was in order to publicly show the country needed to break away from the previous era’s Soviet symbols, values and practises. His grave has a memorial statue beside it.

Krichevsky is one of the three killed on the Sadovoye Koltso road during the August 1991 putsch that attempted to overthrow the government of Mikhail Gorbachev. For some time he had been bringing his work to the seminar in poetry conducted at the journal Iunost’, and the discussion of his poetry had been scheduled for the fall of 1991.

Biographical information about Krichevsky, p.1058, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).

Robin by R. S. Thomas

Dawn. The robin

crumbles his song

into a few pieces

for our Communion.

And humbly we accept;

we need the sacrament

of the Real Presence

if we are to continue

to believe. Pure

spirit is a refraction

only. It is the rainbow

in life’s spray that,

when we put our starved hand

into, lets our hand through.

.

But this wafer of song

we touch with the tip

of our belief, is it not

the pearl without price

we were told of and

have come upon that

we must give up all

our payments on a hire-purchase

happiness to make our own?

.

.

By R. S. Thomas

from Unpublished Poems

Петербург (Petersburg) [Excerpt] by Innokenty Annensky

The wizard’s gifts were only stone,

the River Neva’s yellow brown,

and empty squares like desert wastes

for executions staged at dawn.

 

by Иннокентий Фёдорович Анненский (Innokenty Fyodorovich Annensky)

(date unknown)

translated by Robert Chandler

1918 by Tony Lewis Jones

I am younger than the century. A boy, you think,

But I am chained to a machine gun

Capable of ending a thousand lives

And this makes me a man.

 

There will be no withdrawl.

The officers have warned us:

Here, in our trenches, we fight or die

And no one is to cut me free.

 

In pity for my situation,

Don’t mistake me. I’m as frightened

As the newly wedded bank clerk we all tease

Who’s never known his wife; frightened

 

As the English, waiting to attack

When dawn reveals the cratered wasteground

Under my machine gun’s eye

Like, me, they’re chained to cirrcumstance;

 

The future doesn’t favour deals.

I have to trust my comrades and my gun:

No need to aim this thing. Bring on the enemy.

Let’s see some daylight. Death, release your slaves.

 

By Tony Lewis Jones