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Сборник стихов английских поэтов, погибших в 1940 — 1945
Составитель: Микунис Наталья Семеновна — Заслуженный учитель РФ; Отличник народного просвещения; Член Координационного совета MELTA, ГБОУ города Москвы «Школа № 1208 имени Героя Советского Союза М.С. Шумилова»
JOHN JARMAIN EL ALAMEIN 1 part
There are flowers now, they say, at El Alamein;
Yes, flowers in the minefields now.
So those that come to view that vacant scene,
Where death remains and agony has been
Will find the lilies grow –
Flowers, and nothing that we know.
So they rang the bells for us and Alamein,
Bells which we could not hear.
And to those that heard the bells what could it mean,
The name of loss and pride, El Alamein?
Not the murk and harm of war.
But their hope, their own warm prayer.
It will become a staid historic name,
That crazy sea of sand !
Like Troy or Agincourt its single fame
Will be the garland for our brow, our claim,
On us a fleck of glory to the end ;
And there our dead will keep their holy ground.
But this is not the place that we recall,
The crowded desert crossed with foaming tracks,
The one blotched building, lacking half a wall,
The grey-faced men, sand-powdered over all ;
The tanks, the guns, the trucks,
The black, dark-smoking wrecks.
So be it; none but us has known that land :
El Alamein will still be only ours
And those ten days of chaos in the sand.
Others will come who cannot understand,
Will halt beside the rusty minefield wires
and find there, flowers.
Alun Lewis GOODBYE
So, we must say Goodbye, my darling,
And go, as lovers go, for ever;
Tonight remains, to pack and fix on labels
And make an end of lying down together.
I put a final shilling in the gas,
And watch you slip your dress below your knees
And lie so still I hear your rustling comb
Modulate the autumn in the trees.
And all the countless things I shall remember
Lay mummy-cloths of silence round my head;
I fill the carafe with a drink of water;
You say 'We paid a guinea for this bed,'
And then, 'We'll leave some gas, a little warmth
For the next resident, and these dry flowers,'
And turn your face away, afraid to speak
The big word, that Eternity is ours.
Your kisses close my eyes and yet you stare
As though god struck a child with nameless fears;
Perhaps the water glitters and discloses
Time's chalice and its limpid useless tears.
Everything we renounce except ourselves;
Selfishness is the last of all to go;
Our sighs are exhalations of the earth,
Our footprints leave a track across the snow.
We made the universe to be our home,
Our nostrils took the wind to be our breath,
Our hearts are massive towers of delight,
We stride across the seven seas of death.
Yet when all's done you'll keep the emerald
I placed upon your finger in the street;
And I will keep the patches that you sewed
On my old battledress tonight, my sweet.
KEITH DOUGLAS “Vergissmeinnicht “1part
Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.
The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.
Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.
We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.
But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.
For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.
TIMOTHY CORSELLIS
NEWS REEL OF EMBARKATION
Where are you going to, laughing men?
For a holiday on the sea?
Laughing, smiling, wonderful men,
Why won’t you wait for me?
God, how I love you, men of my race,
As you smile on your way to a war;
How can you do it, wonderful face
Do you not know what’s before?
Laugh, laugh, you soldier sons
Joke on your way to the war
For your mothers won’t laugh at the sound of the guns
And the tales of the filth and the gore.
Smile and joke young sailor Jack
For it’s the self-same story:
There’ll be no jokes when you come back
And bloody little glory.
SIDNEY KEYES
WAR POET
I am the man who looked for peace and found
My own eyes barbed.
I am the man who groped for words and found
An arrow in my hand.
I am the builder
Whose firm walls surround
A slipping land.
When I grow sick or mad
Mock me not nor chain me ;
When I reach for the wind
Cast me not down
Though my face is a burnt book
And a wasted town.
TIMOTHY CORSELLIS “DAWN AFTER THE RAID”
Was it for this that we ached in the darkness
Not knowing that nearby
Another house had fallen
To the blast of the same bomb?
Is it for this that bending we strived
And fought in other’s blood and other’s sorrow
To reach these mangled remains?
…We are the best of those remaining
We are the mellow and the hardened
And though our backs are hard of bending
Under aloofness our souls bend rending
The sorrow out of the bereaved father’s breast
Tearing it out and holding it in our own hands
Adopting it to our own bodies
Caring for the children we had never seen
JOHN JARMAIN AT A WAR GRAVE
No grave is rich, the dust that herein lies
Beneath this white cross mixing with the sand
Was vital once, with skill of eye and hand
And speed of brain. These will not re-arise
These riches, nor will they be replaced;
They are lost and nothing now, and here is left
Only a worthless corpse of sense bereft,
Symbol of death, and sacrifice and waste.
