31 May 2014. A Poem Written in the Hero-City of Odessa in the VOV by Konstantin Simonov… Odessa was on the Cross Then… It’s on the Cross Now

In particular, remember those killed in the fire at the Dom Profsoyuzov in Odessa on 2 May. American-sponsored Galician Uniate terrorists set the building on fire and then shot at those trying to escape. The American media fawns on them… you should not. 

______________________________

To Valentina Serova

If God in his almighty power
Called me to heaven when I died
And I was asked, at heaven’s gate,
What I should choose to take inside,

I should not want, in paradise,
A tedious girl of honest worth.
I’d take with me the very same
With whom I’d shared this sinful earth:

The wild and wilful one, the one
Who gives me (for a time) her love,
She who tormented me below
Would keep me from ennui above.

There must be very few who’d take
Such desperate souls to share their bliss.
The blessed ones would peep at you
And say “Has Heaven come to this?”

I’d take with me the distances –
The agony of separation,
To call to mind when we’re apart
The way you kissed me at the station.

I’d have to take the dangers too,
To keep you anxious, true and wise,
So that no coward should enjoy
The azure brilliance of your eyes.

I’d take to heaven a faithful friend
To drink a toast when all is well.
And I should take the enemy
To fight with… as we did in hell.

Love and ennui and pity I’d take,
Even the nightingale in the wood…
Every tiniest detail of life
That we live on earth, I’d take… if I could.

Even death… if that could be…
I should not leave behind below.
All that is here our lot on earth
I’d choose to take with me… and so

God, in astonishment, would curse
The worldly loyalties of men,
And pretty soon, without a doubt,
Would pop me back on earth again!

Konstantin Simonov

1941

(written in Odessa under siege)

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Konstantin Simonov was one of the most famous poets to come out of the VOV. He wrote the above poem in besieged Odessa in 1941. Today, a brutal and unrepresentative putschist junta that seized power from the legitimate government in February with American connivance occupies Odessa. One of its first actions was to outlaw the Russian language and to try to replace it with a hillbilly pidgin spoken only by a small minority in the Far Western Ukraine. That led to the Crimea rejoining Russia and for the Russian-speaking “Eastern Ukraine” to rise up against these American-fomented fascists. What you read and hear in the American media about the “Ukraine” is false. The people of Novorossiya (the name for the so-called Southeastern Ukraine in tsarist times) want to be free of “Ukrainian” dictatorship. If you love freedom and justice, you’ll support them.

#SaveDonbassPeople

(Google this and look at the images)

BMD

People seem to love the Russian poetry in translation. I’ll try my best to include a few examples each week. One of the purposes of this blog IS to make Russian culture known… and it never hurts to listen to others and to attend to THEIR wants, is it? If you’re interested, why not look at my companion blog, “Art and Faith?” It has a good amount (several thousand images) of our Russian art posted there (and I really should put up more… the current political situation had me focusing on the news).

BMD