The Volokh Conspiracy
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In Crimea's Fields the Poppies Blow
[Listen to song, with the video, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edyVLwWSJ9k.]
In Flanders Fields is of course well known to many English speakers:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below….
I was reminded of this by Poppies, a Russian poem by Grigoriy Pozhenian; it refers to World War II in Crimea, where Pozhenian himself had fought as a young man. Here is my feeble attempt at translating the first couple of stanzas while retaining some of their lyrical qualities; I have removed some Crimean placenames, which I expect have little meaning to our readers, though I retained the term "kurgan" to refer to the ancient burial mounds that are a frequent feature in Ukraine and Crimea:
On the hills of Crimea there is quiet.
On the kurgans of Crimea float dreams.
It's as if there'd been no war, but the war
Is buried right there underneath.It would seem a new day has dawned.
How much water has flowed through the sea.
But just go, just step past the door.
From the poppies there's nowhere to flee.Poppies, poppies, red poppies,
The earth's bitter memories
Do you really dream of the men
Do you really dream of the men
Who never returned from these fields? …
Here is a more literal and complete translation, from LyricsTranslate:
There is silence over the Fedyun Hills
There are dreams over the Malahov Mound
As if there had never been war there,
But war is buried in the silenceYou might think that everything is over
The sea water has changed for 30 years
But if you step outside
You can't escape the poppiesPoppies, poppies, red poppies…
The bitter memories of the earth
Do you really see in your dreams…
Do you really see in your dreams
Attacks of soldiers who never came back home?Poplar trees bloom on the Sapun Mountain
Cranes fly over the Sapun Mountain
In the fields poppies sway in the wind,
Poppies - the conscience of earthYou might think, "Why make such a fuss?
They have been burning in the grass for 30 years."
But how I'd like to fall in that grass
And to lie down in the red poppiesPoppies, poppies, red poppies…
The bitter memories of the earth
Do you really see in your dreams…
Do you really see in your dreams
Attacks of soldiers who never came back home?There is silence over the Fedyun Hills
There are dreams over the Malahov Mound
As if there had never been war there,
But war is buried in the silence
The YouTube video is a Russian-language performance by Efimych (Oleg Sharandanov), which I especially liked. Here, by the way, is a description of the author of Poppies (Pozhenian) attributed by Wikipedia to a Soviet admiral, F.S. Oktiabrskiy:
I've never met a more hooliganish and reckless officer in my fleet! An absolute bandit! I nominated him for the Order of the Hero of the Soviet Union, but then during the Eltigen landing he threw a political commissar overboard. Naturally, that led to a complaint to the military authorities. They started to organize a court martial. But then they came to their senses and limited themselves to withdrawing the recommendation for the medal.
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I always thought it was the poppies GROW, not blow.
They are a pioneering plant, as are Poplar trees, growing on barren bulldozed soil.
Or blown up soil.
You mean you were confidently wrong about the words to a very famous poem from the early twentieth century, never bothered to learn the right words, and aren’t going to change now that you’ve been corrected?
Who’d have thunk it?
“Mine was a vintage desk with iron scrollwork on the sides, an empty inkwell on top, a shelf below, lumps of petrified gum on the underside of it and some ancient inscriptions, one from ’94 (“Lew P.”) that made me think how old I’d be in ’94 (fifty-two) and wonder who would have my place. I thought of leaving that child a message. A slip of paper stuck in a crack: “Hello. September 9, 1952. I’m in the 5th grade. It’s sunny today. We had wieners for lunch and we played pom-pom-pullaway at recess. We are studying England. I hope you are well and enjoy school. If you find this, let me know. I’m 52 years old.” But Bill the janitor would find it and throw it away, so I only scratched my name and the date next to Sylvester Krueger’s (’33), a distinguished person whose name also appeared on a brass plaque by the library, “In Memoriam. Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends.” It was an honor to have Sylvester’s desk, a boy who probably sat and whiled away the hours with similar thoughts about Washington and Lincoln, cars, peckers, foreign lands, lunch. School was eternity, a quiet pool of imagination where we sat together and dreamed, interrupted by teaching, and thought of the boy Lindbergh (from Little Falls, a little east of us), the boy Lincoln, Wilbur and Orville, Lou Gehrig, all heroes, and most of all, I imagined Sylvester who left the room and died in France where his body was buried. Strange to think of him there, French guys mowing the grass over him and speaking French; easy to think of him here, working fractions under George Washington’s gaze. His mother came to school one day. Maybe it was Arbor Day, I remember we planted a tree in the memory of those who died for freedom, and I wasn’t one of the children chosen to shovel the dirt in. Bill the janitor dug the hole, and the filling honors went to the six children who were tops in school citizenship, which didn’t include me. They were lunchroom and hall monitors, flag-raisers, school patrol, and I was a skinny kid with wire-rim glasses who had to do what they said. Mrs. Krueger was a plump lady in a blue dress who put on her specs to read a few remarks off a card. I studied her carefully on account of my special relationship with her
son, Sylvester. She was nervous. She licked her lips and read fast. It was hot. Some kids were fooling around and had to be shushed. "I know Sylvester would be very proud of you and glad that you remember him," she said. The little sliver of tree
was so frail; it didn't last the spring. Bill had dug the hole in left field and the tree got stomped in a kittenball game at the All-
School Picnic. Mrs. Krueger looked like a person who was lost. Mrs. Meiers walked her to the corner, where she would take
McKinley Street home. I tagged along behind, studying. Mrs. Krueger seemed to have very sore feet. At the corner, she thanked Mrs. Meiers for the very nice ceremony. She said, "A
person never forgets it when they lose a son, you know. To me, it's like it was yesterday.""
I’m sorry that You-Crane gave up their Nuke-ular Weapons(to Roosha) and neglected their military for the last 30 years, Not my Chob Mane!
Frank
Perhaps you can convince Sasha to give us a recitation of this one. His readings were a welcome addition to the blog during early CoVID.
I sense Mr. Volokh hopes no one recalls his original uncertainty concerning which side of the Russia-Ukraine conflict occupied the higher moral ground.
He would probably be more effective ignoring the issue than revisiting it in this manner periodically.
No one recalls it because it didn't happen and you're full of shit, as usual.
If I post the link to Prof. Volokh's statement, will you find another disaffected corner of the world and stop posting here, you lying, bigoted, worthless clinger?
Or are you just another all-talk, full-of-bullshit, lying malcontent drawn to a white, male, antisocial, right-wing blog?
Huh? It's not my job to induce you to support your bullshit lies.
If you weren't just another all-talk, full-of-bullshit, lying malcontent, you'd understand the concept of using evidence to support your claims.
But you haven't provided any evidence to support you claims because there is none.
Chose reason, every time, and not the superstitions bullshit you're peddling.
If you can pry your nose out of former professor Volokh's ass long enough to revisit some bizarre waffling from a guy who can't stop talking about how much of an American he is, here is a link.
I will welcome your effort to explain away that 'apparently' part. Much as I will welcome your replacement, clinger.
See, I told you you were lying.
You could try the "English wasn't his first language angle," but the guy is on the board of a dictionary usage panel (or something similar).
Or you could pretend he didn't say Russia "appears to be" unjustified with respect to the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia "appears to be" in the wrong in Ukraine the way Trump "appears to have lost" the 2020 election; Trump "appears to be" on trial; and the Volokh Conspiracy "appears to be" a blog that regularly publishes vile racial slurs.
You "appear to be" a Volokh-Trump sycophant the way the Mavericks "appear to be" up 3-0 on the 'wolves and the Phillies (38-16) "appear to be" outperforming the Rockies (18-34).
Carry on, clingers. So far as your betters -- the liberal-libertarian mainstream, the culture war's victors in the reality-based world -- permit.
Or in the same way you appear to be a lying sack of shit.
I'm a lying sack of shit.
You're a bigoted, disaffected, socially inept cultural reject.
Everybody has problems, clinger. Except my problems include deciding how lenient to be with the culture war's losers after better Americans have stomped the last of their stale, ugly shit out of them..
Your problems include having delusions of grandeur? The does sound bad. Best of luck with that, Arthur.
The culture war is not quite over but has been settled. The good guys have won. Conservatives like you are the roadkill. Your betters will call the shots with which losers like you will comply. When you are begging for leniency, I will be enjoying the victory.
Yeah, footlong has your number. You are, indeed, a lying piece of shit. From your link:
"But as an American, my heart goes out to the Ukrainians, the victims of what appears to be a senseless, unjustified attack by a dictator on a flawed but basically free and democratic country."
. . .
"But even putting things into perspective, Putin's actions strike me as inexcusable, and I very much hope that they will backfire."
What kind of asshole would qualify condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine with "appears to be?"
This blog's kind of asshole . . . apparently.
That’s the best you’ve got?
Wait till you hear what some people were saying on October 8!
A clean, well-wiped asshole that doesn't spew shit at all times. Want to hear what kind of asshole I think you are?
DONT KLICK the LINK,
Unless you enjoy (Redacted)
You’ve been warned
Frank
The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you but not for me
Oh death where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling
Where grave thy victory
Opium poppies ? OK, let them grow !
apparently it's legal to plant the illegal ones.