Poems...

The twentieth century, the forties.
Shielding its wounded chest,
Unconquered Russia
Blocks the fascist's path.

And, having lost its sound mind,
The executioner senses the end,
And under its bloody heel
There are shootings, tortures, a child's cry…

On corpses upon corpses, looking at the sky,
And suddenly at the edge of the pit:
"Don't kill me, uncles!
And I'll sing you a song."

Trembling and stammering, directly
Above a pile of still-warm bodies
The child sings about a bunny
To the beast, over his sister and mother…

The eighties. The people
Glorified the country with their labor,
But year after year
The orphanage becomes increasingly full of sorrow.

Why is a four-year-old boy
Given the burden of
Bearing the great sorrow of the people
On his thin shoulders, not for fear, but for conscience?

He wakes up crying at night,
And the thread of understanding breaks:
"Don't give me back to my mother!
I'm afraid - my mother will beat me"...

Wake up, people - the children are crying!
Tell me, my great people -
The fascist is responsible for those children,
But who is responsible for the current orphans?

(V. Lebedev)