Notes

If your house means a thing to you
Where you first dreamed your Russian dreams
In your swinging cradle, afloat
Beneath the log ceiling beams.
If your house means a thing to you
With its stove, corners, walls and floors
Worn smooth by the footsteps of three
Generations of ancestors.

If your small garden means a thing:
With its May blooms and bees humming low,
With its table your grandfather built
Neath the linden - a century ago.
If you don't want a German to tread
The floor in your house and chance
To sit in your ancestors' place
And destroy your yard's trees and plants

If your mother is dear to you
And the breast that gave you suck
Which hasn't had milk for years
But is now where you put your cheek;
If you cannot stand the thought
Of a German's doing her harm.
Beating her furrowed face
With her braids wound round his arm.
And those hands which carried you
To your cradle washing instead
A German's dirty clothes
Or making him his bed .

[If you haven't forgotten your father
Who tossed you and teased your toes,
Who was a good soldier, who vanished
In the high Carpathian snows,
Who died for your motherland's fate,
For each Don and each Volga wave,
If you don't want him in his sleeping
To turn over in his grave,
When a German tears his soldier picture
With crosses from its place
And before your own mother's eyes
Stamps hobnailed boots on his face.]

If you don't want to give away
Her you walked with and didn't touch,
Her you didn't dare even to kiss
For a long time - you loved her so much,
And the Germans cornering her
And taking her alive by force,
Crucifying her - three of them
Naked, on the floor; with coarse
Moans, hate, and blood, -
Those dogs taking advantage of
All you sacredly preserved
With your strong, male love.

If you don't want to give away
To a German with his black gun
Your house, your mother, your wife
All that's yours as a native son
No: No one will save your land
If you don't save it from the worst.
No: No one will kill this foe,
If you don't kill him first.

And until you have killed him, don't
Talk about your love - and
Call the house where you lived your home
Or the land where you grew up your land.

If your brother killed a German,
If your neighbor killed one too,
It's your brother's and neighbor's vengeance,
And it's no revenge for you.
You can't sit behind another
Letting him fire your shot.
If your brother kills a German,
Hes a soldier; you are not.

So kill that German so he
Will lie on the ground's backbone,
So the funeral wailing will be
In his house, not in your own.
He wanted it so It's his guilt
Let his house burn up, and his life.
Let his woman become a widow;
Don't let it be your wife.
Don't let your mother tire from tears;
Let the one who bore him bear the pain.
Don't let it be yours, but his
Family who will wait in vain.

So kill at least one of them
And as soon as you can. Still
Each one you chance to see!
Kill him! Kill him! Kill!