Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov

It is as if my friends are marching
And I along with them, in time,
Through many different streets they're passing,
Those nearest, dearest friends of mine.
...

In Vyazma is an ancient house
Which once one night was home to us.

That night we ate whatever came,
...

When you come back into your town,
And women come to meet you there
And hold above their greying heads
The children high into the air,
...

That's how we live, without forgetting,
Today it's him, tomorrow I.
The cup of death goes round the table
And each must wait his turn to die.
...

In a dream, I saw a wedding
And I think the bride was you.
You the bride and I a beggar
At the porch - it may be true!
...

You get from time to time a man
Who's every woman's silent friend -
A friend without ulterior aim,
A friend on whom she can depend.
...

With glass a thousand miles thick
Parting has glazed the windows of your flat;
And I look through, as from another world,
But not a sound is audible through that.
...

The sense that love is coming's worse
Than love itself. Love is like war -
You've come together, eye to eye.
You're with her - nothing more in store.
...

I cannot write a single line of verse,
Not to the girl you were, nor to you now.
And after all the bitter words we've said
Why should we meet again for one more row?
...

I buried love and doomed myself to be
Its monument. Above the recent grave
Upon myself I carved a dozen lines,
Beyond my strength and posthumously brave.
...

I want to say to you 'You are my wife!'
Because you were not called that by the rest,
Because to my old home, destroyed by war,
You're hardly likely now to come as guest;
...

The major brought the boy out on the gun;
His mother dead, unwept, no time for tears.
He was a child for whom the last ten days
In this world or the next will count as years.
...

I remember two girls at the door in the night,
(Your shows ended later the year before last)
Two fans at the door of the theatre with me,
Who hoped for two words from your lips as you passed.
...

Remember, Alyosha, the roads of Smolenshchina,
Remember the rain and the mud and the pain,
The women, exhausted, who brought milk in pitchers,
And clasped them like babies at breast, from the rain.
...

Above our submarine's black nose she rises -
That Venus, which is like no other star!
We men, long missing out on girls' caresses,
Await her like a woman from afar.
...

You used to say to me 'I love you!',
But that was through your teeth, at night,
The bitter truth of 'I endure you'.
You almost uttered in the light.
...

If God in his almighty Power
Called me to heaven when I died
And I was asked, at Heaven's gate,
What I should choose to take inside,
...

Don't be angry if I write
Only just from time to time,
Writing now, and then again,
Waiting till another time.
...

Not long ago, when I was at a dinner,
I heard a toast - and here I write it down.

'I had a dream' the speaker said to us
...

For three long months continues the bombardment.
The bloodstained Malakov withstands it still.
The hoarse-voiced drum drives on the British redcoats.
Once more they throw themselves against the hill!
...