War Photographs by Phil Carradice

The classic view, shot quickly between raids –
Long lines of waiting men snake back to shore.
Behind them, framed by smoke and shell, France fades
And steels itself to rule of gangster law.

Perhaps one day I’ll spot my father there
Amongst that crowd of salt-stung men, flesh raw,
Exhaustion and defeat in each blank stare –
I need him now to leap to me once more.

Remember how the waiting warlord loomed
By chance out of a crowded Munich street?
Crazed eyes exultant as the camera zoomed,
That summer of fourteen, his world complete.

Bizarre how evil lasts, caught there on film
While goodness dies, a falling, fading rhyme.
I search for just the faintest hint of him;
And, oh, if I could see him one more time.

By Phil Carradice

Additional information: Phil Carradice (born 1947), is a Welsh writer and broadcaster. Carradice was born in Pembroke Dock. He was educated at Cardiff College of Education and Cardiff University, and became a teacher and social worker. After several years as head of Headlands Special School in Penarth, near Cardiff, he retired from the teaching profession to become a full-time writer. He hosts a history series on BBC Radio Wales entitled The Past Master. Carradice is a prolific public speaker and travels extensively in the course of his work.

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Мы только женщины – и, так сказать, “увы!”… (We’re Only Women) by Novella Matveyeva

We’re only women – alas, as it were.

But why alas? Time to define the reason.

‘Wine and women’ – so you say.

But we don’t talk of ‘chocolates and men’!

.

We distinguish you from buns or toffee

We somehow feel that people are not hams,

Though (to hear you) we only differ

In never having a head upon our shoulders.

.

‘Wine and women’? Let’s follow it from there.

Woman, take a cookbook,

Say ‘I love you better than jugged hare,

Than strawberry jam! Than pig’s feet! Than fish pie!’

.

Well, how do you like my affection?

You’re a person, not a piece of cheese?

– And I?

.

.

By Новелла Николаевна Матвеева

(Novella Nikolayevna Matveyeva)

(1965)

Translated by J. R. Rowland

.

Below is the original Russian Cyrillic version of the poem.

.

Мы только женщины – и, так сказать, “увы!”…

Мы только женщины – и, так сказать, “увы!”

А почему “увы”? Пора задеть причины.

“Вино и женщины” – так говорите вы,

Но мы не говорим: “Конфеты и мужчины”.

.

Мы отличаем вас от груши, от халвы,

Мы как-то чувствуем, что люди – не ветчины,

Хотя, послушать вас, лишь тем и отличимы,

Что сроду на плечах не носим головы.

.

“Вино и женщины”? – Последуем отсель.

О женщина, возьми поваренную книжку,

Скажи: “Люблю тебя, как ягодный кисель,

Как рыбью голову! Как заячью лодыжку!

.

По сердцу ли тебе привязанность моя?

Ах, да! Ты не еда! Ты – человек! А я?”

Урал впервые (The Urals For The First Time) by Boris Pasternak

Without obstetrician, in darkness, unconscious,
The towering Urals, hands clawing the night,
Yelled out in travail and fainted away,
Blinded by agony, gave birth to light.
 
In thunder, the masses and bronzes of mountains,
Accidentally struck, avalanched down.
The train went on panting. And somewhere this made
The spectres of firs go shyly to ground.
 
The smoke-haze at dawn was a soporific,
Administered slyly – to mountain and factory -
By men lighting stoves, by sulphurous dragons,
As thieves slip a drug in a traveller's tea.
 
They came in to fire. From the crimson horizon
Down to their timberline destination,
Asians were skiing with crowns for the pines.
And summoning them to their coronation.
 
And the pines, shaggy monarchs, in order of precedence
Rising up, stepped out, row on row
On to a damascened cloth-of-gold carpet
Spread with the orange of crusted snow.
 

by Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к
(Boris Leonidovich Pasternak)
(1916)
from Поверх барьеров (Over The Barriers)
translated by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France 

The poem recited by Anastasiya Dikovistkaya in Russian.

Below is the original, Russian Cyrillic, version of the poem.

Урал впервые

Без родовспомогательницы, во мраке, без памяти,
На ночь натыкаясь руками, Урала
Твердыня орала и, падая замертво,
В мученьях ослепшая, утро рожала.

Гремя опрокидывались нечаянно задетые
Громады и бронзы массивов каких-то.
Пыхтел пассажирский. И, где-то от этого
Шарахаясь, падали призраки пихты.

Коптивший рассвет был снотворным. Не иначе:
Он им был подсыпан - заводам и горам -
Лесным печником, злоязычным Горынычем,
Как опий попутчику опытным вором.

Очнулись в огне. С горизонта пунцового
На лыжах спускались к лесам азиатцы,
Лизали подошвы и соснам подсовывали
Короны и звали на царство венчаться.

И сосны, повстав и храня иерархию
Мохнатых монархов, вступали
На устланный наста оранжевым бархатом
Покров из камки и сусали. 

Winged God by R. S. Thomas

All men. Or shall we say,
not chauvinistic, all
people, it is all
people? Beasts manure
the ground, nibble to
promote growth; but man,
the consumer, swallows
like the god of mythology
his own kind. Beasts walk
among birds and never
do the birds scare; but the human,
that alienating shadow
with the Bible under the one
arm and under the other
the bomb, as often
drawn as he is repelled
by the stranger waiting for him
in the mirror – how
can he return home
when his gaze forages
beyond the stars? Pity him,
then, this winged god, rupturer
of gravity's control
accelerating on and
outward in the afterglow
of a receding laughter?
 
by R. S. Thomas
from No Truce With The Furies (1995) 

‘What did they do’ by Boris Slutsky

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