С Днём Победы. Никогда не забудем.

9 мая 1945г.

"Remember" (a wordle-poem)

The Sunday whirl:

"Remember"

My land in flames,

The enemy’s enormous,

A giant spider spins its fylfot web

Of death, and suffering, and slavery.

My people: men, women, children

Turning overnight into the old time warriors.

Their armor – unbroken spirit, and unshaken faith

In triumph of goodness over dark and evil.

Forefathers’ blessing is bestowed on them,

Fills them with grace as they go out to battle

For what is right.  The struggle’s long and fierce,

But ends in splendor, when the rugged banners

Of what once was an undefeated army

Are thrown in heaps onto the cobble stones

Of my own city.  For there is no force

That cows my land, my people into slaving.

The past not so remote, but forgetful

Man tends to be, so let us not forget.

May our minds turn into marble stelas

With names imprinted on them, names of millions.

Let’s read them all, all spelled in golden letters,

And bow our heads in silence,

And remember.

© Alexandra A. Palmer

Live for the Love of it,

The Happy Amateur
 http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/wordle-73/

"The Cranes Are Flying"

Great Patriotic War

June 22^nd 1941 – May 9^th 1945

 

The Cranes Are Flying (Летят Журавли)

Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov

Written by Viktor Rozov (play and screenplay)

Starring Tatyana Samojlova and Aleksey Batalov

Music by Moisey Vaynberg

Outstanding cinematography by Sergey Urusevsky

Studio Mosfilm

USSR

1957

Image credit: Ruskino 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Cranes-Flying-Criterion-Collection/dp/B0000633SD/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1340397020&sr=1-1&keywords=the+cranes+are+flying

Live for the Love of it,
The Happy Amateur

Never Forget

This image prompt (courtesy of photobucket) came from Hannah Gosselin at Flashy Fiction.

She was a kid, when the war broke up.  A teen, only just discovering life.  Falling in love for the very first time.  Recognizing in her high school sweetheart her future husband, the father of her children.  It was a special time, a happy time.  The war was somewhere far, far away, in a distant land.  It loomed there to catch up with her later.   

All her adult life she has been carrying the burden of almost personal guilt for what happened to the world then.  She – who has not ever hurt anybody – feels deeply responsible for the atrocities committed against people.  She is not a Jew, but she goes to church to commemorate the Holocaust, to pray for the slaughtered millions, to pray for us.  

Her memory was not tainted by war.  It was pure and untouched, like the freshly fallen snow.  She wanted to remember.  She filled her memory with ugly things that did not belong:  mountains of human flesh, Auschwitz barbed wire that makes her heart bleed.  

Always pray for forgiveness.  Never forget.  Never.

Live for the Love of it,

The Happy Amateur