“They say that sometimes a man cannot recognize

himself in a looking-glass. It is even harder to recognize
oneself in the clouded mirror of the past.”

― Ilya Ehrenburg, People, Years and Life

They, who gave their lives anonymously,

Men, women, children— who died for Soviet Russia,

Those whose names, whose faces are now memory

like the lilacs, once bouquets, now seeds again

across the earth.

I have seen cranes fly across darken, evening skies,

But greatness is to meet the glory and danger,

that is before you, nonetheless,

May has come again with its sunlight not blotting

out deaths of ultimate sacrifice,

The great hurrahs of Soviet soldiers heard again—

Belarus, Ukraine, all of Europe awakening at sunrise,

to the sounds of soft Russian boots.