The Deportation

A poem by the Chechen national poet Ismail Kerimov, originally published in 1994 on the 50th anniversary of the deportation of the entire Chechen people, carried out in 1944 on the orders of Joseph Stalin. Via Marius L.


I ache
I am thousands.
Thousands of tears
Shed under the roar of the wheels in February 1994
I am a sea

I am hundreds
I am thousands of bodies collected in obscure stations.
I am a tombstone, a monument,
I am the despair of shattered mothers,
With frozen prayers.

I am the sky,
I am Khaibakh, Katyn and the GULAG
The bloody throne of a dictator,
I am glasnost,
I am the heart of a poet, nature, song
Swelling illness in the throat,
I am a voice and I command you
"Remember!"