Poetry should be heard, as well as read. Each provides different aspects of the richness of words.
I have this in my copy buffer for those who can't play the video for any reason.
Babi Yar
By Yevgeni Yevtushenko
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Requested by Ruth Blumenthal
No monuments stand over Babi Yar,
A sudden drop sheer as a gross graveslab.
I am here terrified.
Today I am
As old as all the Jewish people are.
Now it seems that I am
an Israelite.
There I am wandering Ancient Egypt's lands,
And there I perish, pierced and crucified,
And to this day bear nail-scars on my hands.
And Dreyfus too is
me,
there I have been
Sentenced, sold out
by petty philistines.
I am behind bars,
rounded up and battered,
I have been
hounded, hunted,
slandered, spat on,
And demoiselles dolled up in Brussels lace
Shrieked as they poked their parasols in my face.
And now I am
a boy in Białystok.
Blood runs across the floor. Blood on the wall.
The bar-room rabble-rousers run amok
Reeking of onion and hard alcohol.
Boots kick my body aside, helpless. Head gushing,
I plead in vain with thugs of the pogrom
To hoots of
"Smash the fucking kikes! Save Russia!"
And some grain-seller beats and rapes my mom.
My People! Russian nation!
I know,
you
Are internationalist at the core,
But men with filthy hands too often boomed
Your clean sweet name into a jingo roar.
I know the good, the kindness of your land.
How vile it is
that, with no pinch of scruple,
those pompous antisemites tried to brand
themselves a "Union of the Russian People."
It seems that what I am is
Anne Frank
Transparent
as a fragile April branch.
And I love.
And I need no puffy phrase.
I need for us
to meet each other's gaze.
So little we can see or smell,
we who
Have been denied the sky,
denied the leaves.
But we can do so much:
to tenderly
Embrace each other in a darkened room.
"They're coming!"
"Don't be scared.
That's just the clamor
of early spring.
It is spring coming here!
Come here.
Give me a kiss, quick."
"Are they ramming
The door?"
"Shhhh...no, that's cracking ice you hear."
The wildgrass rustles over Babi Yar.
Trees stare down stern,
judicial,
cold as day.
All things scream silent here.
Hat in my arm,
I feel myself now
slowly growing grey.
And I myself
am one all-out soundless scream
For the thousand buried thousands in this char.
I'm every old man
shot in this ravine,
I'm every baby
burned in Babi Yar.
No fiber in me
will forget this ever.
Let the Internationale
thunder forth
When we have buried, finally and forever,
The final antisemite on this earth.
There is no Jewish blood in me, it's true.
But with their callous ossified revulsion
Antisemites must hate me like
a Jew
And that is what makes me
a real Russian.
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