Maak kennis met

The heart went on strike,

as if it were a mine.

Just yesterday,

hair even whiter in the snow,

he left the Kremlin, hatless,

shaky,

through ghosts of boyars,

tsars,

and leaders.

Malyuta spied on him in the powdery snow,

and so did Beria,

and that pock-marked butcher….

 

His last words to his wife

and the world were:

"Tomorrow there will be a battle…."

History's most peaceful rebel,

in dying, he

did not come down from the cross,

but he left a horrifying hole

in the moral fabric of the world.

 

Death.

There is no strike more terrible,

But in defiance of advancing death

stoop shouldered,

face whiter than a leaflet,

he raised his fists

above the Congress's jeers.

 

Not vengeance,

not personal spite,

but reason led him to save the country

from rule by arrogance,

self-genocide,

which had turned into war against the self.

 

He understood, in premonition of the end,

boos still ringing in his ears:

that unenlightened semifreedom

was just a step away from enlightened freedom.

 

O, Homeland!

weary of tears and groans,

lines,

and prisons,

and hospitals,

don't grow accustomed

after the murder of millions

to the loss of individual geniuses.

The pivot of a nation

is an individual.

A nation is made up of people,

not zeros.

 

O Homeland!

to keep from freezing over,

learn at last to be warmer toward your geniuses.

We 're too closely enmeshed

with the base and the unclean,

and if we solve complexities crudely,

head on,

we will have to weep over the idealists

we hound to the grave.

 

Will we be able to avert apathy

and keep up our spirits and our conscience,

and worry how to earn our freedom

where power belongs to everyone

and the only authority is conscience?

Let's unite at the fateful mountains pass!

As long as our hearts

bear up under the load

and do not tire,

do not go on strike….

As long as there is a tomorrow,

tomorrow there will be a battle.

 

Yevgeny YEVTUSHENKO

Translated, from the Russian, by Antonina W. Bouis. December 15, 1989.