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There is no memorial above Babi Yar.
The steep ravine is like a coarse tombstone.
I'm frightened,
I feel as old today
as the Jewish race itself.
I feel now that I am a Jew.
Here I wander through ancient Egypt.
And here I hang on the cross and die,
and I still bear the mark of the nails.
I feel that I am Dreyfus.
The bourgeois rabble denounce and judge me.
I am behind bars, I am encircled,
persecuted, spat on, slandered,
and fine ladies with lace frills
squeal and poke their parasols into my face.
I feel that I am a little boy in Bielostok.
Blood is spattered over the floor.
The ringleaders in the tavern are getting brutal.
They smell of vodka and onions.
I'm kicked to the ground, I'm powerless,
in vain I beg the persecutors.
They guffaw: "Kill the Yids! Save Russia!"
A grain merchant beats up my mother.
Oh my Russian people, I know
that at heart you are internationalists,
but there have been those with soiled hands
who abused your good name.
I know that my land is good.
How filthy that without the slightest shame
the anti-Semites proclaimed themselves:
"The Union of the Russian People."
I feel that I am Anne Frank,
as tender as a shoot in April,
I am in love and have no need of words,
but we need to look at each other.
How little we can see or smell!
The leaves and the sky are shut off from us,
but there is a lot we can do -
we can tenderly embrace each other
in the darkened room!
- "Someone's coming!"
- "Don't be frightened. These are the sounds of spring,
spring is coming.
Come to me,
give me your lips quickly!"
- "They're breaking down the door!"
- "No! It's the ice breaking!"
Above Babi Yar the wild grass rustles,
the trees look threatening, as though in judgment.
Here everything silently screams,
and, baring my head,
I feel as though I am slowly turning grey.
And I become a long, soundless scream
above the thousands and thousands buried here,
I am each old man who was shot here,
I am each child who was shot here.
No part of me can ever forget this.
Let the "International" thunder out
when the last anti-Semite on the earth
has finally been buried.
There is no Jewish blood in my blood,
but I feel the loathsome hatred
of all anti-Semites as though I were a Jew -
and that is why I am a true Russian!
Tsars, kings, emperors,
rulers of all the world,
have commanded parades
but couldn't command humor.
In the palaces of the great,
spending their days sleekly reclining,
Aesop the vagrant turned up
and they would all seem like beggars.
Aesop the vagrant turned up
and they would all seem like beggars.
In houses where a hypocrite had left
his wretched little footprints,
Mullah Nasredin's jokes would demolish
trivialities like pieces on a chessboard!
Mullah Nasredin's jokes would demolish
trivialities like pieces on a chessboard!
They've wanted to buy humor,
but he just wouldn't be bought!
They've wanted to kill humor,
but humor gave them the finger.
Fighting him's a tough job.
They've never stopped executing him.
His chopped-off head
was stuck onto a soldier's pike.
But as soon as the clown's pipes
struck up their tune,
he screeched out:
"I'm here!"
and broke into a jaunty dance.
Wearing a threadbare little overcoat,
downcast and seemingly repentant,
caught as a political prisoner,
he went to his execution.
Everything about him displayed submission,
resignation to the life hereafter,
when he suddenly wriggled out of his coat,
waved his hand
and - bye-bye!
They've hidden humor away in dungeons,
but they hadn't a hope in hell.
He passed straight through
bars and stone walls.
Clearing his throat from a cold,
like a rank-and-file soldier,
he was a popular tune marching along
with a rifle to the Winter Palace.
He's quite used to dark looks,
they don't worry him at all,
and from time to time humor
looks at himself humorously.
He's eternal.
Eternal!
He's artful.
Artful!
And quick,
And quick!
he gets through everyone and everything.
So then, three cheers for humor!
He's a brave fellow!
Some with shawls, some with scarves,
as though to some heroic enterprise or to work,
into the store one by one
the women silently come.
Oh, the rattling of their cans,
the clanking of bottles and pans!
There's a smell of onions, cucumbers,
a smell of "Kabul" sauce.
I'm shivering as I queue up for the cash desk,
but as I inch forward towards it,
from the breath of so many women
a warmth spreads round the store.
They wait quietly,
their families' guardian angels,
and they grasp in their hands
their hard-earned money.
They wait quietly
their families' guardian angels,
and they grasp in their hands
their hard-earned money.
These are the women of Russia.
They honor us and they judge us.
They have mixed concrete,
and ploughed, and harvested...
They have endured everything,
they will continue to endure everything.
They have endured everything,
they will continue to endure everything.
Nothing in the world is beyond them -
they have been granted such strength!
It is shameful to short-change them!
It is sinful to short-weight them!
As I shove dumplings into my pocket,
I sternly and quietly observe
their pious hands
weary from carrying their shopping bags.
Fears are dying out in Russia,
like the wraiths of bygone years;
only in church porches, like old women,
here and there they still beg for bread.
I remember when they were powerful and mighty
at the court of the lie triumphant.
Fears slithered everywhere, like shadows,
penetrating every floor.
They stealthily subdued people
and branded their mark on everyone:
when we should have kept silent, they taught us
to scream,
and to keep silent when we should have screamed.
All this seems remote today.
It is even strange to remember now.
The secret fear of an anonymous denunciation,
the secret fear of a knock at the door.
Yes, and the fear of speaking to foreigners?
Foreigners? ...even to your own wife!
Yes, and that unaccountable fear of being left,
after a march, alone with the silence?
We weren't afraid of construction work in blizzards,
or of going into battle under shell-fire,
but at times we were mortally afraid
of talking to ourselves.
We weren't destroyed or corrupted,
and it is not for nothing that now
Russia, victorious over her own fears,
inspires greater fear in her enemies.
I see new fears dawning:
the fear of being untrue to one's country,
the fear of dishonestly debasing ideas,
which are self-evident truths;
the fear of boasting oneself into a stupor,
the fear of parroting someone else's words,
the fear of humiliating others with distrust
and of trusting oneself overmuch.
Fears are dying out in Russia.
And while I am writing these lines,
at times unintentionally hurrying,
I write haunted by the single fear
of not writing with all my strength.
The priests kept on saying that Galileo
was dangerous and foolish.
(That Galileo was foolish...)
But, as time has shown,
the fool was much wiser!
(The fool was much wiser!...)
A certain scientist, Galileo's contemporary,
was no more stupid than Galileo.
(Was no more stupid than Galileo...)
He knew that the earth revolved,
but he had a family.
(But he had a family...)
And as he got into a carriage with his wife
after accomplishing his betrayal,
he reckoned he was advancing his career,
but in fact he'd wrecked it.
(But in fact he'd wrecked it...)
For his discovery about our planet
Galileo faced the risk alone,
and he was a great man.
(And he was a great man...)
Now that is what I understand by a careerist.
So then, three cheers for a career
when it's a career like that of
Shakespeare or Pasteur,
Newton or Tolstoy,
or Tolstoy... Lev?
Lev!
Why did they have mud slung at them?
Talent is talent, whatever name you give it.
They're forgotten, those who hurled curses,
but we remember the ones who were cursed,
(but we remember the ones who were cursed...)
All those who strove towards the stratosphere,
the doctors who died of cholera,
they were following careers!
I'll take their careers as an example!
I believe in their sacred belief,
and their belief gives me courage.
I'll follow my career in such a way
that I'm not following it!
Translation Andrew Huth