Zakhar Prilepin - Sin

and from the heat and the screaming
our timid horses will shudder
and the chief will dress us down
tomorrow for our debauchery
but the blaze will be seen
from as far away as Astrakhan

Plunging their nails in blood,
the entire dense army howls.
Butchery until night
or fighting since morning.
The heavy mist, like a monster,
looks greedily into our eyes.
And the desert does not heed.
What can it say anyway.
Dazed friends draw off
tremulous mead.
From the beauties in the district
only death takes it in the mouth.
You cannot find a ram, or new gates.
It’s too early to retreat.
And no one wants to advance.
We sit here. Scratch our ribs.
Twist our mouths. Wait
for an order.
Golden trash! Guys!
God remembers us!
Here’s our angel in the sky.
But he is squint-eyed.
The sun shines so brightly…
like a fool without pants.
Will we make it or is it doubtful?
Hey, toss a coin.

From the cloudy blue a white scarf waves.

…You know what’s her name
how we wandered barefoot
and swum naked
we were caught in the rapids…

I know it all, brother.

sometimes I think:
perhaps everything happened
otherwise and what is happening now
is just tatters of post-traumatic delirium
a spatter of ruptured memory
idle running of suspended reason

maybe that spring
lying with a machine gun
in the frozen and revolting mud
covered with cartridge shells
maybe then — three hours later —
when the shots died down
and everyone wandered
over to the column
torn apart like a bag
of Christmas presents
I did not get up and remained
lying, already freezing
and twisted, they dragged me
into the vehicle
and to tear the gun out
of my hands they braced their leg
against my hard stomach
but I didn’t care
or maybe
in that winter accident
I did not look indifferently
at the intricate patterns
of the windscreen
and remained sitting
with the driver who had
driven into my ribcage
with stupidly open mouth
and staring eyes

but most likely in the village
where I was born and
where I haven’t been
for so long —
if I can get in there unnoticed
and end up there somehow as a spy
hiding behind the trees by a yellow
ridiculous building —
in that village I will see
a fair-haired boy
with skinny arms
looking at baby chicks
who of course is not me
and cannot be me

I’ll buy myself a portrait of Stalin
three by three
in the storeroom of a museum
closed for repairs forever
from the janitor,
who remembers nothing.
Doesn’t even remember Stalin.

I’ll buy a portrait of Stalin. — Pipe, coat, cunning squint. — A cheap whore will buy Rublyov. — Bow to the ground and weep. — All sluts can be bought with dope. — They will all stuff their cheeks with pity. — Baddies, your mama, turncoats. — I’ll gouge out your eyes, tyrants. — These are dying, these are frozen. — Are these the lands you inhabit.

Impenitent in the ruins. — Ancestor of my lost grandchildren. — From the fires of the holy Russian camp. — I’ll buy myself a portrait of Stalin. — Even a tyrant, even a devil. — I’ll exchange it for a cross and an amulet. — I’ll be a scum, you’ll dream of me. — Hello, motherland! We are your herd.

We are your cattle and your flock. — We will cook a dish for you. — From two thousand years of fearlessness. — Eat it, dog! paid for with blood! — Our granary is looted. — A grey roof slides sideways. — Our gates are unassailable. — They were torn like a mouth by a yawn. Your lover ogles-Gogols you. — My Dostoevsky homeland — the cornea of the deer’s eye. — Fierce dogs have torn your guts out.

Hey, icon-painting sluts! Raise your shamelessness, your crimson skirts. — Your eyes, tired as God. — Your foolish ginger heads. — Hey, My Rublyov poets, how much heresy there is in you. — My down-to-earth girls, my reckless boys.

Pavel Vasiliev
Artyom Vesyoly
Ivan Pribludny
Boris Kornilov

Come to me, my friends. — We’ll eat black berries together. — I ask you for understanding. — I bring you a request for mercy from my heavenly district. — Your names are in my name. — Our motherland is our protectress. — Eyes up and keep the music quieter — the day of commemoration begins.

I’ll buy myself a portrait of Stalin…

the sound of a bell
the scent of flowers
you
dancing a waltz alone
on a hill
your legs are so alluring
I dreamt the most radiant dream
in a rickety truck
where I was lost among
the corpses of people
who were shot along with me

In the midnight heat at a café
by the Jordan
everything was mixed.
The cocktail did not cool.
Faces were touched
with inspired heat:
the explosive wave was
as soft as sour cream.
The head trembles.
Where do we attack?
The East is scattered.
Borders are everywhere.
Everything was mixed.
And the machine gun is pitiful.
The brain is squashed with terror,
like a tomato.
O, spine of mine,
I cannot flee from you!

Above the ocean troubles have begun,
their step rattles like a happy skeleton.
Here midnight is beaten by exquisite rockets,
their crimson gullet raised to the Almighty.
But He does not grant a cry nor a sigh.
The infantry tears ribcages in a roar,
and lets hearts go free, enraged.
And the funeral songs of the East.
And the thin throats of rockets in the dawn.

Stay away from the flash of cigarettes:
here snipers don’t believe in glowworms.
Where’s that Semite who asked us a question?
The answer’s ready, please come in after three
glasses. Boy, give us a pomegranate.
And a knife — to cut it into pieces,
and a dish to gather the crimson juice.
Allah Aqbar, O my little counterpart!
Let us break this vulgar omnipotence.

Sunrise. The East is losing its boundaries.
Ripping off the skin, it is sweet to discover
the rye meat. Here the fat is layered.
I stamp my foot: East, reveal your soul to me!
Can it really be a pathetic gap?
Inside Saddam the wind seeks its echo.
Inside Adam it is muffled, like in the earth.
But at Sodom a blunder appears
in a hat with earflaps, and shows a tipsy face.

Be afraid then, haggard neurotic,
the quiet heel will squash you.
And there will be peace.
And blossoming will come into the world.
We will see crooked caterpillars in the flowers.
The gloom of trousers will impassively arise,
without distinguishing the guilty
and the innocent.
Meanwhile we are still a little tipsy.
The East hangs like a curtain in Israeli cafes.
We listen to a recording from Palestine.

Meat concert in the café by the Jordan…

…better to make a hole in the snowy
crust with rusty spit,
to whisper with your face in the snow:
“well, you’ve fired your shots, soldier…”,
not to call the ones who have gone
to the height, where our
piece of land was taken and appropriated,