Sooner or later, every post-war period
becomes a pre-war period.
The outcome of the Sixth World War
will depend on how we have treated
the prisoners-of-war from the Fifth.
by Борис Абрамович Слуцкий (Boris Abramovich Slutsky)
(early 1960s?)
translated by Robert Chandler
What did they do
with the relatives of Christ?
What did they do with them?
No written source
will tell you a damned thing –
nothing but crossings out, emptiness.
What the hell did they do with them?
What did they do
with those simple people,
simple craftsmen, men who worked on the land?
Were all marched off to some nearby wilderness,
lined up and machine-gunned?
Whatever happened then, two centuries later
there were no demands for compensation or calls for revenge?
Total posthumous rehabilitation of Jesus
led to no rehabilitation of kin.
And now flowers are growing from the relatives of Christ.
Below them lie depths, above them rise heights,
yet world history had found no place
for those relatives of Christ.
by Борис Абрамович Слуцкий (Boris Abramovich Slutsky)
(1977)
translated by Robert Chandler
It was the time of the election.
The ravens loitered above the hill
In slow circles; they had all air
To themselves. No eyes heard
Them exulting, recalling their long
History, presidents of the battles
of flesh, the sly connoisseurs
Of carrion; desultory flags
Of darkness, saddening the sky
At Catraeth and further back,
When two, who should have been friends,
Contended in the innocent light
For the woman in her downpour of hair.
by R. S. Thomas
from Pietà (1966)
Fun Fact: The poem refers to the Battle of Catraeth and the medieval Welsh poem Y Gododdin.
People, years and nations
run away forever
like a flowing river.
In nature’s supple mirror
We’re the fish,
dark’s ghosts are gods,
and the constellations
knot night’s nets.
by Велимир Хлебников (Velimir Khlebnikov)
a.k.a. Виктор Владимирович Хлебников
(Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov)
(1915)
translated by Robert Chandler
Fun fact: This was written shortly before the centenary of Derzhavin’s death, continuing the theme’s of his last poem.
We know what trembles in the scales,
What has to be accomplished.
The hour for courage. If all else fails,
With courage we are not unfurnished.
What though the dead be crowded, each to each,
What though our houses be destroyed? –
We will preserve you, Russian speech,
Keep you alive, great Russian word.
We will pass you to our sons and heirs
Free and clean, and they in turn to theirs,
And so forever.
by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova)
(23 February 1942)
from Седьмая книга (The Seventh Book)
translation by D. M. Thomas
Rambling At The Bridge Head 
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