In Flanders Fields is of course well known to many English speakers:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below….
I was reminded of this by Poppies, a Russian poem by Grigoriy Pozhenian; it refers to World War II in Crimea, where Pozhenian himself had fought as a young man. Here is my feeble attempt at translating the first couple of stanzas while retaining some of their lyrical qualities; I have removed some Crimean placenames, which I expect have little meaning to our readers, though I retained the term “kurgan” to refer to the ancient burial mounds that are a frequent feature in Ukraine and Crimea:
On the hills of Crimea there is quiet.
On the kurgans of Crimea float dreams.
It’s as if there’d been no war, but the war
Is buried right there underneath.
It would seem a new day has dawned.
How much water has flowed through the sea.
But just go, just step past the door.
From the poppies there’s nowhere to flee.
Poppies, poppies, red poppies,
The earth’s bitter memories
Do you really dream of the men
Do you really dream of the men
Who never returned from these fields? …
Here is a more literal and complete translation, from LyricsTranslate:
There is silence over the Fedyun Hills
There are dreams over the Malahov Mound
As if there had never been war there,
But war is buried in the silence
You might think that everything is over
The sea water has changed for 30 years
But if you step outside
You can’t escape the poppies
Poppies, poppies, red poppies…
The bitter memories of the earth
Do you really see in your dreams…
Do you really see in your dreams
Attacks of soldiers who never came back home?
Poplar trees bloom on the Sapun Mountain
Cranes fly over the Sapun Mountain
In the fields poppies sway in the wind,
Poppies—the conscience of earth
You might think, “Why make such a fuss?
They have been burning in the grass for 30 years.”
But how I’d like to fall in that grass
And to lie down in the red poppies
Poppies, poppies, red poppies…
The bitter memories of the earth
Do you really see in your dreams…
Do you really see in your dreams
Attacks of soldiers who never came back home?
There is silence over the Fedyun Hills
There are dreams over the Malahov Mound
As if there had never been war there,
But war is buried in the silence
The YouTube video is a Russian-language performance by Efimych (Oleg Sharandanov), which I especially liked. Here, by the way, is a description of the author of Poppies (Pozhenian) attributed by Wikipedia to a Soviet admiral, F.S. Oktiabrskiy:
I’ve never met a more hooliganish and reckless officer in my fleet! An absolute bandit! I nominated him for the Order of the Hero of the Soviet Union, but then during the Eltigen landing he threw a political commissar overboard. Naturally, that led to a complaint to the military authorities. They started to organize a court martial. But then they came to their senses and limited themselves to withdrawing the recommendation for the medal.
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