Joseph
Vissarionovich Stalin
by
Yiannis Ritsos
No. It is not true.
It is not true.
So stop the bells.
Stop them.
Joseph Stalin did not die.
Stalin is present in his world post.
Stalin is raising on the ramparts
of the five continents
the flags of peace.
Stalin is preparing
with the scattered flour of the world
a round loaf of health.
So stop the bells.
Stop them.
As much as the one-eyed cannons
turn their black muzzles
straight against the blast furnace of our hope
Stalin is awake in his world post.
Hush, grandma,
and wipe with your black kerchief
your eyes.
When your fire is going out under your pot
it is Stalin who bends over and blows your fire
to light up.
When the bread is missing from our table
and the dream from our mattress
and the oil lamp from our flat roof
it is Stalin who turns on the big electrics
on the horizon
and we hear under the night tunnels
the roar of the trains
carrying oil and bread and coal
to the hungry.
Because Stalin is
the first son of the proletarians
and Stalin is their father too.
For this
even the blackest wall
of the darkest night
is full
from the tubes of the light.
So stop the bells.
The centuries are climbing
at the top of his soul to breathe.
Do not say that the sun has orphaned.
Look.
Every sun and page —day by day —
with the suns of his 74 years,
made a thick book of steel
and put it on the knees of the people.
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.
With his name History opens
its gates to human.
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.
His work:
Freedom.
So stop the bells
and listen.
Above Red Square, on the platform of the sun,
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
speaks:
“Defend, Peoples, Peace”.
Yiannis Ritsos
4. ΙΙΙ. 53.
The poem was published on 5 March 1953 in the reformist Journal
“Avgi” because the official communist newspaper was banned after
the Civil War, as well as the Party too.
Translated from the Greek by Reddie
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