Author's website Alexander Korotko

* * *

A cast*

of your last words,

Soldier,

mixed with blood

and mud

sticking to the soles

of your boots,

which have seen

this carnage.

And next to it is

a new artifact:

this is a cast* of silence

mixed with

explosions of shells,

and the echo

of the most select obscenity.

A little further away is a third cast* –

of your open eyes,

in which, mixed with

the blue sky,

the moment froze forever

as evidence,

proof

that a new day has already come,

cheerful,

without war, and without you.

* Figuratively, the cast that the poet has in mind is a death mask. (Tr.)