Everything is looted, spoiled, despoiled,
Death flickering his black wing,
Anguish, hunger – then why this
Lightness overlaying everything?
By day, cherry-scent from an unknown
Wood near the town. July
Holding new constellations, deep
At night in the transparent sky –
Nearer to filthy ruined houses
Flies the miraculous…
Nobody has ever known it,
This, always so dear to us.
– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (1921)
– from Anno Domini MCMXXI translation by D. M. Thomas
See that field,
in ’39 a Heinkel crashed,
the bodies
scattered amongst the turnips
their uniforms
grey as morning.
I was the first there,
was just 29.
I looked through bits of wing and wire,
the Germans all dead.
I knelt down on my knees
and see this ring,
I wiggled it
from the pilot’s finger,
took it home
in my hankerchief,
cleaned off
the mud and the blood,
put it on
my little finger,
where late at night
it burned
my tongue a knot
of strange language,
shame
winking
from all corners
of the room.
by Gwyn Parry
