Flowers & Bullets by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

 

(English translation by Anthony Kahn)

 

Of course:

Bullets don't like people

    who love flowers,

They're jealous ladies, bullets,

    short on kindness.

Allison Krause, nineteen years old,

    you're dead

for loving flowers.

 

When, thin and open as the pulse

    of conscience,

you put a flower in a rifle's mouth

    and said,

"Flowers are better than bullets,"

    that

was pure hope speaking.

 

Give no flowers to a state

    that outlaws truth;

such states reciprocate

    with cynical, cruel gifts,

and your gift, Allison Krause,

was the bullet

    that blasted the flower.

 

Let every apple orchard blossom black,

    black in mourning.

Ah, how the lilac smells!

    You're without feeling.

Nothing, Nixon said it:

    "You're a bum."

All the dead are bums.

    It's not their crime.

You lie in the grass,

    a melting candy in your mouth,

done with dressing in new clothes,

    done with books.

 

You used to be a student.

      You studied fine arts.

But other arts exist,

      of blood and terror,

and headsmen with a genius for the axe.

 

Who was Hitler?

      A cubist of gas chambers.

In the name of all flowers

      I curse your works,

you architect of lies,

      maestros of murder!

Mothers of the world whisper

      "O God, God!"

and seers are afraid

      to look ahead.

Death dances rock-and-roll upon the bones

      of Vietnam, Cambodia -

On what stage is it booked to dance tomorrow?

 

Rise up, Tokyo girls,

       Roman boys,

take up your flowers

       against the common foe.

Blow the world's dandelions up

       into a blizzard!

Flowers, to war!

       Punish the punishers!

Tulip after tulip,

       carnation after carnation

rip out of your tidy beds in anger,

choke every lying throat

       with earth and root!

You, jasmine, clog

       the spinning blades of mine-layers.

 

Boldy,

   block the cross-hair sights,

   drive your sting into the lenses,

       nettles!

Rise up, lily of the Ganges,

       lotus of the Nile,

stop the roaring props

   of planes pregnant

       with the death of children!

Roses, don't be proud

    to find yourselves sold

        at higher prices.

Nice as it is to touch a tender cheek,

thrust a sharper thorn a little deeper

    into the fuel tanks of bombers.

 

Of course:

    Bullets are stronger than flowers.

Flowers aren't enough to overwhelm them.

    Stems are too fragile,

    petals are poor armor.

But a Vietnam girl of Allison's age,

    taking a gun in her hands

is the armed flower

    of the people's wrath!

If even flowers rise,

    then we've had enough

    of playing games with history.

 

Young America,

    tie up the killer's hands.

Let there be an escalation of truth

to overwhelm the escalating lie

    crushing people's lives!

Flowers, make war!

    Defend what's beautiful!

Drown the city streets and country roads

    like the flood of an army advancing

and in the ranks of people and flowers

    arise, murdered Allison Krause,

Immortal of the age,

    Thorn-Flower of protest!