In the first episode of the revived CITIZEN POET project, Mark Bernes. What would this native of Nizhyn, Chernihiv Oblast, sing about the shelling of Ukrainian energy infrastructure? Artur Smolyaninov performs Dmitry Bykov's version.
Citizen Poet. We can do it again!
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Dark night,
About which Bernes wouldn't sing:
He was a Ukrainian Jew,
His homeland is Nizhyn.
No lights.
Four nuclear power plants are out.
The city of Kyiv stands without lights,
Darkened and covered in snow.
Look, cosmonaut,
How the darkness spreads like a stain,
How I recall the experience of the blockades
And the Lend-Lease experience,
Look, occupier,
How the maternity hospitals stand without light,
How the children sit in shelters
And how they stoke the fire with books.
Russian night
Reached schools and hospitals,
A thousand faces
Pulling out pig mugs,
A black stench
Stretched from the Russian borders,
And if they don't put a stop to it,
It will flood the rest.
Odious night!
The thug's talk hissed,
No straight roads, no byways –
Only crooked paths,
Only a small bunker,
Where one Führer hides,
And one bald cook
Feeds the Führer with a spoon.
Dark night
Still not for a thousand years,
Nothing is endless,
Except the malice of the outcast. Current has nothing to do with it –
Dawn will break in Ukraine,
But in Russia, dawn is forbidden
And something else will come.
Dark night
Down upon her, like shame,
Kyiv does not sleep,
As usual, holding on to the edge,
And never,
Never does Arestovich pee,
Promising the victory of good
In two or three weeks.