A huddle of frightened soldiers
Fret to keep warm in a makeshift winter dugout.
The whispers from the commanders are ominous:
An offensive is coming.
All we can do, us cold shivering men,
Is to wait.
On television a few days ago,
Oleksii walked with a swagger.
With calm, sharp, reassuring eyes,
He tells his people that the war,
This war, will pass
And victory is assured.
Now he looks less certain
Fidgeting over his lover’s locket
Taking off his wedding ring and wearing it again
Sometimes in the dead of the night
I hear his muffled weeping.
Now we brave, bold, and patriotic men
Lumped together like a litter of kittens
We remind ourselves
That we are men
We tell stories of the families we have left to defend
But in the aftermath, we are once again alone together
Staring coldly into the eyes of death
Telling ourselves that we are
Brave, bold, and patriotic men
As we wipe away the tears that make our beards grow heavy.
Thick snow blurs the horizon
Our motherland is generous with her beauty
Sergei says the clouds today look like a woman’s bust
We burst out laughing
Good old Sergei, always with his jokes
But it is not the colour white we anticipate with bated breath
But the single crackle of blinding yellow
Arching furiously across the sky
That will spell the end of all things.
