Lying to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
Telling them that God’s in his heaven
and all’s well with the world is wrong.

They know what you mean.
They are people too.
Tell them the difficulties can’t be counted,
and let them see not only what will be
but see with clarity these present times.

Say obstacles exist they must encounter,
sorrow comes, hardship happens.
The hell with it.
Who never knew the price of happiness will not be happy.
Forgive no error you recognize, it will repeat itself,
a hundredfold and afterward our pupils
will not forgive in us what we forgave.


Translated by Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi.

We are dwarf birches.
We sit firmly, like splinters,
under the nails of frosts

and the Khanate of Eternal Freeze
engages in many shenanigans
to bend us down lower and lower.
Are you astonished, Parisian chestnuts?

Are you pained, haughty palms,
that we seem to have fallen low?
Are you embittered, pacesetters of fashion,
that we are all such Quasimodos?

While safe and warm, though,
you are pleased with our courage,
and you send us, pompous and mournful,
your moral support.

You figure, dear colleagues of ours,
that we are not trees but cripples.
Yet our leaves--though ugly--
seem progressive to you, for the frost.

Thanks a million. Alone, if you please,
we shall weather it under the sky,
even if savagely bent and twisted.
Without your moral support.

Of course, you command more freedom.
But, for all that, our roots are more strong.
Of course, we don’t dwell in Paris,
but we are valued more in the tundra.

We are dwarf birches.
We have cleverly made up our poses.
But all this is largely pretense.
Constraint bears the form of rebellion.

We believe, bent down forever,
eternal frost can’t last.
Its horror will yield.
Our right to stand upright will come.

Should the climate change, won’t
our branches at once grow
into shapes that are free?
Yet we’re now used to being maimed.

And this worries and worries us,
and the frost twists and twists us,
but we dig in, like splinters,
we--dwarf birches!

Translated by Vera Dunham
        

The wild grasses rustle over Babii Yar.
The trees look ominous,
like judges.
Here all things scream silently,
and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
turning gray.
And I myself
am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here.
I am
each old man
here shot dead.
I am
every child
here shot dead.
Nothing in me
shall ever forget!
The 'Internationale', let it
thunder
when the last antisemite on earth
is buried forever.
In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
In their callous rage, all antisemites
must hate me now as a Jew.
For that reason
I am a true Russian!


Translated by George Reavey