The Italian

The Italian by Mikhail Svetlov (1943)

On the chest of an Italian rests a black cross,
No carving, no pattern, no shiny gloss,
A poor family’s modest heirloom
Once proudly worn by their only son…

Young man, young Neapolitan!
What did you leave on the Russian plain?
Why could you not stay there to be happy
Safe and sound in your Gulf of Naples sea?

I am the one who killed you near Mozdok,
Who often dreamt of your Vesuvius rock!
How I yearned on the Volga to be free
And just once take a gondola out to sea!

But I did not come there with a gun,
To take away your life and summer sun.
My bullets were not fired to whistle by
In your own sacred land, in Raphael’s sky!

I shot and killed you here where I was born,
Where I was proud to fight like those before,
Who died for us that we might share their pride
Defending lives whose tales remain denied.

The winding, twisting river Don flows
In ways a foreign scientist never knows.
Did you ever plough or sow our land
Our Russia – Our very own Russland?

No! You came in trucks and tanks to seize
And destroy all these distant colonies.
So your family’s modest cross and heirloom
Would grow to the size of a soldier’s tomb…

I warn you now so it is not mistaken
I will not let my dear homeland be taken!
Each shot I take has no justice higher
Than the justness of each bullet I fire!

You never lived here, never came in peace.
But scattered in our blackened snowy fields
Glazed in the frozen gaze of foreign eyes
Still now reflect Italian sea and skies…

Mikhail Svetlov  1943     Translation by Samuel Novnik  © 2022