A Free Snowman
I have deserved the gratitude of Italy.
I have contributed to their history,
To people, art and culture, by and large:
I gave them snow. And plenty. Free of charge.
Italians, captured on the River Don,
Were packed and convoyed in a cattle car
All starved and thirsty, barely hanging on
All hoping that their end was not too far.
Those human rights, as stated in conventions,
Did not pertain to either side’s intentions,
In that big war they didn’t have much worth!
The train’s commandant, vile scum of the earth,
That odious bastard, would agree to bring
One pail of water to those hapless fellows
But not for free: a couple of golden rings
That blackguard then demanded for his favors.
I, in my stripes, just in from the front line,
Had kept that moral sense of the divine,
Formed by the books of Chekhov and Tolstoy
And in the rearguard, my zeal did not decline
Seeing the wretched souls in that convoy.
I came up with a very simple plan:
Into that cattle car I rolled a big snowman.
Oh, how they looked! Their gazes pierced my heart;
In their black depths, there was both gratitude and anguish
At night they haunted me and then my sleep would vanish!
As for the snowman – it was torn apart.
.
Бесплатная Снежная Баба
Я заслужил признательность Италии.
Ее народа и ее истории,
Ее литературы с языком.
Я снегу дал. Бесплатно. Целый ком.
Вагон перевозил военнопленных,
Плененных на Дону и на Донце,
Некормленых, непоеных военных,
Мечтающих о скоростном конце.
Гуманность по закону, по конвенции
Не применялась в этой интервенции
Ни с той, ни даже с этой стороны,
Она была не для большой войны.
Нет, применялась. Сволочь и подлец,
Начальник эшелона, гад ползучий,
Давал за пару золотых колец
Ведро воды теплушке невезучей.
А я был в форме, я в погонах был
И сохранил, по-видимому, тот пыл,
Что образован чтением Толстого
И Чехова и вовсе не остыл,
А я был с фронта и заехал в тыл
И в качестве решения простого
В теплушку бабу снежную вкатил.
О, римлян взоры черные, тоску
С признательностью пополам мешавшие
И долго засыпать потом мешавшие!
А бабу – разобрали по куску.
.
When, finally, the war is won…
.When, finally, the war is won,
Its gain is only for the winner.
But for the soldier’s lonely widow
For nights on end, the war goes on.
The winner meets his glory days;
The widow’s dreary days are creeping –
Into her nights the cold is seeping
From one of countless nameless graves.
The loser had faced defeat and pain
But then endured his affliction,
Rebuilt his damaged ammunition,
And now – seems fit to fight again.
He is hanging on, though sometimes harried
And he moves forward when he can.
The soldier’s widow never married –
She never met another man.
.
Оказывается, война…
Оказывается, война
не завершается победой.
В ночах вдовы, солдатки бедной,
ночь напролет идёт она.
Лишь победитель победил,
а овдовевшая вдовеет,
и в ночь её морозно веет
одна из тысячи могил.
А побежденный побежден,
но отстрадал за пораженья,
восстановил он разрушенья,
и вновь – непобежденный он.
Теперь ни валко и ни шатко
идут вперёд его дела.
Солдатская вдова, солдатка
Второго мужа не нашла.
.
Poet Bio
Boris Slutsky (1919 -1986) is a Soviet poet. He was born in Tula but spent his childhood and youth in Kharkov, Ukraine. In 1937 he entered the Maxim Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow. He was a member of a group of young poets who called themselves “the Generation of 1940.” In 1941-1945 he served in an infantry platoon. Slutsky’s first book of poetry, “Memory,” was published in 1957. Many of the poems were about World War II, and Slutsky became one of the most prominent Soviet poets of the War Generation. Slutsky was often criticized for his unpoetic and conversational style. Slutsky translated Yiddish poets Leib Kvitko, Yakov Sternberg, and others into Russian. In 1963, “The Poets of Israel ” was edited as the first anthology of Israeli poetry under Slutsky’s guidance.
Translator’s Bio
Olga Dumer was born and educated at Moscow Pedagogical University, Russia. She has earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees in English Language and Literature. She obtained her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. After migrating to the USA, she has worked as an Associate Professor of English/ English as a Second Language and Linguistics in Southern California. She has also worked as a freelance translator and interpreter. Her work has been published in Four Centuries: Russian Poetry in Translation. Olga lives in San Diego, CA.
