Навіщо. What For

***

He carried his sub machine gun without a belt,

Clutching it to his chest,

As if it were a first-born.

He breathed in its smell

Of molten metal and a week-long battle.

He went with no way,

Just not to captivity or to heaven.

He ate dry sunflowers' seeds, stuffed in his mouth,

He could not swallow them

As he drank only once from a puddle.

And so three days

To go hiding,

Spend nights on wastehill tops,

Make his way

Between the lines of a poem,

Looking for rhymes,

And they are not there.

And he rescued his weapon

And gave it to a new arrival,

The one whose eyes are still bright

For he had not yet seen

How the fire engine burnt

In which his brothers-in-arms from the reconnaissance company of

"Donbas"

Were leaving Ilovaysk along the green - red - black corridor.

Details later,

When the last one comes out,

And he is still going...

All the awards had been handed out,

And he is still going.

Those who came out had had a good sleep in their homes,

And he is still going.

The wounded who waited for too long have their arms and legs

Cut off,

And he is still going.

Victory proclaimed, and truce ignored,

And he is still going.

They're burying dead in the alleys of heroes,

And he is still going.

The battalion commander has new grandiose plans

With no account for the one who's still going,

And he is still going.

And again, I wait until morning.

7 September 2014