Stockings

Поэтический перевод произведения «Их расстреляли на рассвете...»
У стихотворения «Чулочки» на русском языке нет документально установленного автора,
предположительно – Муса Джалиль, Эдуард Асадов или Людмила Голодяевская.
Стихотворение на русском языке опубликовано на странице [СТЕНОГРАФ]

At dawn they’ve seen their execution,
When darkness was still growing white.
There, kids and women, for "solution"
Were led, …this girlie was in sight.

At first they’re told no clothes to wear,
And stand their backs against the moat,
But child’s voice popped up out there,
Naive, and pure, alive to float:

“Should I take off the stockings, mister?”
Without judgment, with no cries,
Right to the soul, this little sister
Directed her three-year-old eyes.

“The stockings too", – and for a moment,
Dismay engulfed the SS man.
The hand unwillingly, in torment,
The gun to hold no longer can.

By this blue gaze as if restrained
He seemed to grow into the soil.
“The eyes were like my daughter’s gained.” –
In blank dismay he tried to toil.

He was engulfed, unwilled, in shiver,
The soul in terror failed to shush.
No, her to kill he can’t deliver,
But sprayed a burst as in a rush.

The girl in stockings “kissed the ground”...
To take them off, she failed and missed.
Oh, soldier, what if in this mound,
Your kid, likewise, “the ground kissed”?...

Indeed, this heartlet, very tiny,
Succumbed to you with deadly lead...
You are a Man, not just a heinie,
Or, you’re a human beast instead?...

The SS trod in aggravation,
With eyes of his downcast with gloom.
Perhaps a novel meditation
The poisoned brain tried to relume.

The gaze of blue all through is streaming,
And everywhere rings like a scoff
What in the memory’s still screaming:
"The stockings, mister, take them off?"