The darkness drops its anchor on our lungs and wefeel the weight of each breath. Here even the windis helpless as it breaks its back on our windowsand moans outside our door. I have ransomed mymemories from Moscow and soon I will be freebut the war goes on and they continue the assaulton the weakened walls, the burned-out interior, theholy of holies where our thoughts are stored andonce again I am defenseless.
Listen: the footsteps, the voices, the ones thatspeak for darkness and the ones that speak fromdeath, repeating their words, their warnings. Thereis nowhere to retreat, the country is on fire andpeople swim through the flames with fluorescentarms,
Oh Voronezh!
dark and damp you entered the south side of mybones, creaking, opening the hinges that shiveredin my blood you sank your sonorous songs into mysoul. Your bleak sky is a fortune I have alreadyforetold, and I know this winter will neversurrender the earth, no it will hold on, cradling thesnow in frozen fists until its lips are blue andmotionless.
Voronezh you are buried under glass, in a facadeof work and your habitual practice that leavesboulders in the way of the blind. Here everythinghas turned into a mystery, the old man playing thebalalaika without strings, the seasons marooned ona calendar, and always the axe of the executionerabove our heads. Voronezh is this life or death?
And now I want to clear my throat and speak butsoon my mouth will be full of sand so I leave thisto the archaeologists who will dig up the facts onebone at a time.
Voronezh I am calling to you across the years ofexile over ramshackle houses and a railway linethat leads back to civilization and through thewinters that never forget how cold life can be, andsomewhere out there on one of your hills the sunwas pinned at the point of the interrogator’squestion, then the light sank into the snow andthat is all, that is all.
