Liubov Sirota

To Vasily Deomidovich Dubodel, who passed away in August 1988, and to all past and future victims of Chernobyl.

They did not register us
and our deaths
were not linked to the accident.
No processions laid wreaths,
no brass bands melted with grief.
They wrote us off as
lingering stress,
cunning genetic disorders . . .
But we--we are the payment for rapid progress,
mere victim (of someone else's sated afternoons.
It wouldn't have been so annoying for us to die
had we known
our death would help
to avoid more "fatal mistakes"
and halt replication of "reckless deeds"!
But thousands of "competent" functionaries
count our "souls" in percentages,
their own honesty, souls, long gone--
so we suffocate with despair.
They wrote us off.
They keep trying to write off
our ailing truths
with their sanctimonious lies.
But nothing will silence us!
Even after death,
from our graves
we will appeal to your Conscience
not to transform the Earth
into a sarcophagus!

* * *
Peace unto your remains,
unknown fellow-villager!
We'll all end up there sooner or later.
Like everyone, you wanted to live.
As it turned out,
you could not survive . . .

Your torment is done.
Our turn will come:
prepare us a roomier place over there.
Oh, if only our "mass departure"
could be a burning lump of truth
in duplicity's throat! . . .

May God not let anyone else
know our anguish!
May we be extinction's limit.
For this, you died.
Peace unto your remains,
my fellow-villager
from abandoned hamlets.

Translated from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta Ritchie