Sacred is the memory of the blockade

Lev POSTOLOV

SACRED IS THE MEMORY
OF THE BLOCKADE VICTIMS OF LENINGRAD
AND NOT ONLY THEM.

      A review and response to the poem
      by the poet E-TON "Blockade."

Those who, during
the Great Patriotic War
were able to survive
the Nazi siege
of Leningrad,
Mostly,
have already departed
for another world. -

Man is not eternal, -
And hardened
by the deprivations of the siege
Blockade and the Cold
of the Nazi invaders.

And their grandchildren,
Unfamiliar with the hardships
Which their grandfathers had endured
Along the road of defeats
And victories
Along the road of bloody battles
To Victory '45,
Suddenly decided to look
From the outside
At the Cold Seas, -
(FIVE WINTER, -
2022/2026 in a row), -
Which they
Five times pushed
With their bayonets, -
(Systematically
Destroying with missiles and bombs
The life-support infrastructure
Of the civilian population, -
(from the Black Sea to Karrath), -
To their neighbor, -
A co-religious
Christian country, -
To see with their own eyes,
What it was
like for their grandmothers
And their mothers, -
(Was it for Victory?), -
Was it in hungry
And cold, besieged
Leningrad to winter.

Above Piskarevskoye Cemetery
With a memorial over the bodies
of 300,000 Leningraders
who survived the siege
Winter and summer,
the salty Baltic winds whistle
Like tears of grief
Baltic winds whistle
Tirelessly and without pause
Burial service
for the victims of the siege
German occupiers,
Inhuman thugs,
Bloodthirsty barbarian beasts.
Now the winds of the Dnieper
Carpathian and Black Sea regions
Are doomed to forever bury
The victims of the
peaceful people in Ukraine
Cruise missiles
And five cold winters.

           February 20, 2026.