Chernobyl Poems by Liubov Sirota
A Voice From Dead
Pripyat by Adolph Harash: The story of Lyubov Sirota and the Chernobyl
poems.
Contents
To
Pripyat
They
did not register us
Burden
Radiophobia
At
the Crossing
Fate
Your
glance will trip on my shadow
TO PRIPYAT
1.
We can neither
expiate nor rectify
the mistakes and misery of that April.
The bowed
shoulders of a conscience awakened
must bear the burden of torment for
life.
It's impossible, believe me,
to overpower
or overhaul
our pain
for the lost home.
Pain will endure in the beating hearts
stamped by the
memory of fear.
There,
surrounded by prickly bitterness,
our puzzled
town asks:
since it loves us
and forgives everything,
why was it
abandoned forever?
2.
At night, of course, our town
though emptied
forever, comes to life.
There, our dreams wander like clouds,
illuminate
windows with moonlight.
There trees live by unwavering
memories,
remember the touch of hands.
How bitter for them to
know
there will be no one for their shade
to protect from the scorching
heat!
At night their branches quietly rock
our inflamed dreams.
Stars
thrust down
onto the pavement,
to stand guard until morning . . .
But
the hour will pass . . .
Abandoned by dreams,
the orphaned houses
whose
windows
have gone insane
will freeze and bid us farewell! . .
.
3.
We've stood over our ashes;
now what do we take on our long
journey?
The secret fear that wherever we go
we are superfluous?
The
sense of loss
that revealed the essence
of a strange and sudden
kinlessness,
showed that our calamity is not
shared by those who might,
one day,
themselves face annihilation?
. . . We are doomed to be left
behind by the flock
in the harshest of winters . . .
You, fly away!
But
when you fly off
don't forget us, grounded in the field!
And no matter to
what joyful faraway lands
your happy wings bear you,
may our charred
wings
protect you from carelessness.
Translated from the Russian
by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta
Ritchie
Russian
original of this poem.
To Vasily Deomidovich Dubodel, who passed
away in August 1988, and to all past and future victims of
Chernobyl.
They did not register us
and our deaths
were not
linked to the accident.
No processions laid wreaths,
no brass bands melted
with grief.
They wrote us off as
lingering stress,
cunning genetic
disorders . . .
But we--we are the payment for rapid progress,
mere victim
(of someone else's sated afternoons.
It wouldn't have been so annoying for us
to die
had we known
our death would help
to avoid more "fatal
mistakes"
and halt replication of "reckless deeds"!
But thousands of
"competent" functionaries
count our "souls" in percentages,
their own
honesty, souls, long gone--
so we suffocate with despair.
They wrote us
off.
They keep trying to write off
our ailing truths
with their
sanctimonious lies.
But nothing will silence us!
Even after death,
from
our graves
we will appeal to your Conscience
not to transform the
Earth
into a sarcophagus!
* * *
Peace unto your remains,
unknown
fellow-villager!
We'll all end up there sooner or later.
Like everyone,
you wanted to live.
As it turned out,
you could not survive . .
.
Your torment is done.
Our turn will come:
prepare us a roomier
place over there.
Oh, if only our "mass departure"
could be a burning lump
of truth
in duplicity's throat! . . .
May God not let anyone
else
know our anguish!
May we be extinction's limit.
For this, you
died.
Peace unto your remains,
my fellow-villager
from abandoned
hamlets.
Translated from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta
Ritchie
Russian
original of this poem.
BURDEN
How amazing
in my thirtieth year
not to
live
but instead
stumble along--
all bygone years
both happy and
deadly,
heavy, wet, like logs,
crowd in the soul
as if in a
tomb!
The soul does not sing
but rather becomes
mute;
ails
rather than aches . . .
So it is harder to breathe.
I
am not to fly!
Though the shallow edge
of heaven is over my
porch.
Already the roads have tired me,
hobbled me so--
I can no longer
soar!
Faces reflect in the heavens.
faces of those
to whom I have
said farewell.
Not one can be forgotten!
No oblivion!
The soul, it
seems--
is a difficult memory.
Nothing can be erased,
nothing
subtracted,
nothing canceled,
nothing corrected! . . .
. . . Even
so,--the burden is sacred,
the heavier
the dearer!
Translated
from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta
Ritchie
Revised by Lyubov Sirota
Russian
original of this poem.
RADIOPHOBIA
Is this only--a fear of
radiation?
Perhaps rather--a fear of wars?
Perhaps--the dread of
betrayal,
cowardice, stupidity, lawlessness?
The time has come to sort
out
what is--radiophobia.
It
is--
when those who've gone through the Chernobyl drama
refuse to
submit
to the truth meted out by government ministers
("Here, you swallow
exactly this much today!")
We will not be resigned
to falsified
ciphers,
base thoughts,
however you brand us!
We don't wish--and don't
you suggest it!--
to view the world through bureaucratic glasses!
We're
too suspicious!
And, understand, we remember
each victim just like a
brother! . . .
Now we look out at a fragile Earth
through the panes of
abandoned buildings.
These glasses no longer deceive us!--
These glasses
show us more clearly--
believe me--
the shrinking rivers,
poisoned
forests,
children born not to survive . . .
Mighty uncles, what have you
dished out
beyond bravado on television?
How marvelously the children have
absorbed
radiation, once believed so hazardous! . . .
(It's adults who
suffer radiophobia--
for kids is it still adaptation?)
What has become of
the world
if the most humane of professions
has also turned
bureaucratic?
Radiophobia
may you be omnipresent!
Not
waiting until additional jolts,
new tragedies,
have transformed more
thousands
who survived the inferno
into seers--
Radiophobia might
cure
the world
of carelessness, satiety, greed,
bureaucratism and lack
of spirituality,
so that we don't, through someone's good will
mutate into
non-humankind.
Translated from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta
Ritchie
Russian
original of this poem.
AT THE CROSSING
A century of universal decay.
In
cyclotrons nuclei are split;
souls are split,
sounds are
split
insanely.
While behind a quiet fence
on a bench in someone's
garden
Doom weighs
a century of separation
on the scales.
And
her eyes are ancient,
and her palms are taut with nerves,
and her words
clutch
in her throat . . .
Nearby and cynical, death
brandishes a
hasty spade.
Here, whispers are worse than curses,
offer no
consolation.
Yet out on the festive streets
the mixed chorus
of
pedestrians and cars
never stops.
The stoplight
winks with
greed,
gobbles the fates of those it meets
in the underground
passageways
of eternity.
How long
the bureaucrats
babbled
on
like crows
about universal good . . .
Yet somehow
that universal
good
irreversibly
seeps away.
Have we slipped up?
In the
suburbs, choke-cherries
came out with white flowers
like gamma
fluorescence.
What is this--a plot by mysterious powers?
Are these
intrigues?
We have slipped up!
Choke-cherries are minor.
They are
not vegetables . . .
Here, tomatoes ripened too early:
someone just ate
one--the ambulance
had to be called in a rush.
We have slipped
up.
We came to the sea--
the eternal source of healing . .
.
And--we were stunned.
The sea is an enormous waste dump.
What
happened?
Have we slipped up?
How masterfully
the blind
promoters
of gigantic plans
manipulated us so far!
Now the bitter
payment
for what we so easily
overlooked yesterday..
Has day
died?
Or is this the end of the world?
Morbid dew on pallid leaves.
By
now it's unimportant
whose the fault,
what the reason,
the sky is
boiling only with crows . . .
And now--no sounds, no smells.
And no more
peace in this world.
Here, we loved . . .
Now, eternal
separation
reigns on the burnt out Earth . . .
These dreams are
dreamed
ever more often.
Ever more often I am sad for no reason,
when
flocks of crows
circle over the city
in skies, smoky, alarmed . .
.
Translated from the Russian
by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta
Ritchie
Original
Russian version of this poem.
FATE
(Triptych)
1.
I am working--
as if with my
final strength,
as if from my final days
I look at eternity.
The moment
of farewell
has made my head spin . . .
I adore you--
random
passersby!
To me--you are no one,
but you give me the plot,
the
smile,
the glance laced with bitterness . . .
Your astonished looks follow
me, surprised
I-love you for no reason.
Yet maybe
I can see more
clearly
from the silence,
bareness of abandoned hamlets--
nothing more
absurd than feuds,
nothing more splendid than confession,
how petty are
success and luck,
how lowly the yearning for riches.
Like last year's
snow, you can't buy
at any price the sense
of brotherhood.
What
happiness--
to come home,
to repay debts to friends and kin,
without
thinking
your last duty is
to bow over your smoldering
home!
2.
I accept
this world!
I embrace
this air!
I am
happy
it is not simple
for me
to become
your happiness . .
.
3.
I am working--
as if with my final strength,
as if from my
final days
I look at eternity.
But only with you
is the hour of
daybreak kind.
And only with you
is every evening splendid.
Indeed can
it be
I have only a handful of days
left to live--
to be burnt up in
one short month?
Now,
when I can love so much,
when my world is so
majestic and bright!
Life went up in smoke from somebody's campfire
(this
world has inquisitors to spare!).
Everything burned,
burned up.
Even
the ashes
were not always left behind . . .
But the stubborn soul still
lives
yet again resurrected from ashes!
I live with abandon!
I live,
breathing you!
And for you, I am ready to go
into the inferno
again!
But with merciful hands you extinguish
the fatal fire under
me.
My beloved,
may God protect you!
May the flame of the redeemed soul
shield you!
Translated from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta
Ritchie
Russian
original of this poem.
Your glance will trip on my shadow
and the
shadow
will thrust itself
into the leafy shade.
The pale sun will shine
over us,
a lantern
scorched by the burning question . . .
Caught by the
gravity of the light,
breathing is choked, lips are pressed,
and there is
no answer,
no answer
to this light in the violent night.
But freed from
gravity our shadows
shook the jasmine bush,
they will drift
apart,
breathe night haze at our backs.
And the yellow leaf will fall
exhausted,
it will take unbearably long to inhale.
As if the wisdom of
autumn
were to catch us by surprise . . .
Translated from the
Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta
Ritchie
Russian
original of this poem. Back to
introduction
Sirota's agent in North America: Paul
Brians, Department of English, Washington State University, Pullman
99164-5020.
First published June 19, 1995.
Revised November 11, 2003
Paul Brians' Home Page