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Berlin By Grahame Davies Translated by A.Z. Foreman Click to hear me read the original Welsh Sgt. Nikolai Masalov saved a girl's life on April 28, 1945, during the Battle of Berlin. After the war, a statue recording the event was erected in Treptower Park. We heard her voice amid the sound of guns As we were advancing on the Reichstag, With Nazi bullets chewing up the bridge's statues and our company's cover.  Then, through the smoke, we saw her, a three-year-old German girl crying out amid the troops, beside her mother's corpse. I was not a bronze man at the time when I jumped off that bridge into the river, with Fascists' bullets thrashing up the water around me. I was much uglier than the dapper statue After I'd dragged back through the mud and oil of the river Spree With the girl in my arms. Many times I've been asked: why. At the time, it was instinct: Rescuing a child was as natural as killing an enemy. Now that both Reich and Soviets have receded like...

Stone Children By Lera Yanysheva Translated by A.Z. Foreman It hurts. It's crushing me. Forgive me. Please.    How can you have just left me all at once? I didn't know I would give death to you. Oh God what have I done? Forgive me, sons. My sons, they've paid for sins that I committed. Gone through agony because of me.  I wanted the fine life, the house, the money. Some other Lovara live in luxury.... I wanted you to not want for a thing, A fortune to keep my boys set for life.  So I went and sold my soul to a foul man And started selling heroin as a wife.  What good is all this money to me now?  Oh Christ! What have they gone and done? Why, those Boys knew exactly where to score some smack.  They shot each other up and overdosed. I bought them this luxurious monument. This is the marble that they sleep below. I had to bury you, my boys, my babies. Fortune and fine life left me long ago. Standing and staring at the iron crosses I've locked my hea...