Pilgrimage of poems: One long soundless scream

I first read about Babi Yar in high school, about the same time I first heard some of Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poems. It was a novel notion to me that some guy, in the Soviet Union, long before Glasnost, could be a poet. You know, like Ferlinghetti or Ginsburg or Plath.

I had pretty limited notions of both poets and current events back then. I lived in the suburbs.

When I finally got interested in poetry, one of the first books I bought was one of his collections. I don’t now recall which one, or any of the poems in it; so it didn’t have a lasting effect on me. It was probably a “Hey-I’m-sophisticated-I’m-reading-a-Soviet-poet” kind of statement.

Much later, I picked up a copy of Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar at a used book shop. And at that time I had no bleeding idea of what I was getting myself into—the book cover was extremely sparse in the summarizing blurb department. I just knew it was a novel about a massacre of Jews by the Nazis that took place in Kiev in 1941.

Much later still, when I finally got around to cracking it open to read, a steady tide of horror and disbelief rose over me until I nearly drowned. It turns out that Kutznetsov’s book is a “documentary novel” of his experience witnessing the two-day bloodbath in which nearly 34,000 men, women and children were murdered and shoved layer upon layer into the ravine called Babi Yar.

Kuznetsov says, “"Let me emphasize again that I have not told about anything exceptional, but only about ordinary things that were part of a system; things that happened just yesterday, historically speaking, when people were exactly as they are today."

Yevtushenko also wrote about the atrocity; it’s one of his most famous works. Like Kuznetsov’s, his account is searing. But he uses the poem to point out that the Soviet state is not much of an improvement on the Nazis, and to denounce anti-Semitism in any garb. It was a pretty ballsy move back in 1961, when it was first published.

And I don’t need to make any connection for you between his “Union of the Russian People” and current events. History, baby—if you miss it once, it comes around again.

Babi Yar

No monument stands over Babi Yar.

A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.

I am afraid.

Today, I am as old

As the entire Jewish race itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite.

I wander o'er the roads of ancient Egypt

And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured

And even now, I bear the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself.

The Philistines betrayed me - and now judge.

I'm in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,

I'm persecuted, spat on, slandered, and

The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills

Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Belostok

Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,

The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded

And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.

I'm thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,

In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,

To jeers of "Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!"

My mother's being beaten by a clerk.

O, Russia of my heart, I know that you

Are international, by inner nature.

But often those whose hands are steeped in filth

Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.

I know the kindness of my native land.

How vile, that without the slightest quiver

The anti-Semites have proclaimed themselves

The "Union of the Russian People!"

It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,

Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,

And I'm in love, and have no need of phrases,

But only that we gaze into each other's eyes.

How little one can see, or even sense!

Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,

But much is still allowed - very gently

In darkened rooms each other to embrace.

-"They come!"

-"No, fear not - those are sounds

Of spring itself. She's coming soon.

Quickly, your lips!"

-"They break the door!"

-"No, river ice is breaking..."

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,

The trees look sternly, as if passing judgment.

Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,

I feel my hair changing shade to gray.

And I myself, like one long soundless scream

Above the thousands of thousands interred,

I'm every old man executed here,

As I am every child murdered here.

No fiber of my body will forget this.

May "Internationale" thunder and ring

When, for all time, is buried and forgotten

The last of anti-Semites on this earth.

There is no Jewish blood that's blood of mine,

But, hated with a passion that's corrosive

Am I by anti-Semites like a Jew.

And that is why I call myself a Russian!