would shiver from [our] beauty and happiness.
Native city.
To gather one's friends and classmates...
who, also, served somewhere but were all crybabies,
to open recruit's album with photos before them,
and to tell them: here's my buddy Kolya, we served together,
anyway, buddy, bro...well, I don't know, a bro, that's all.
And this is my rifle, it played me well, my little one.
And this is Fedya, uzbek. Shit knows what was his real name,
we called him Fedya, he was normal guy and called back.
This is our commanding officer. Fair man.
Why doesn't...guys, why aren't you looking?
Is there any beer left?
Or: in the first evening mariner, not used to it, drank vodka,
vomited all over nice uniform,
uniform was put somewhere away and mother thought:
god save! live like a normal man.
She sees that fella ??? and says:
Sonny, show me your photos.
Where is your commanding officer, where are your friends....
Mom, why should you need this? what for?
That's Kolya, my bro, well, buddy.
This is rifle. Mom, forget about it. Forget.
Where did those mariners go, those russian mariners
which were?
From which fluids flow?
Well, they can be felt, they come...
Well, mariners!
Which played music, read poems, knew foreign languages.
On every ship in russian fleet there was a piano.
What for?
They were! And there were nice...
there were wonderful ships, admirals, officers...
But, if to read history of the fleet more carefully,
it turns out theyr were best of all at scuttling their own ships along with themselves.
But they did this - without joking - so that...
your fist cracks when you read this and something
jams here and doesn't let to breath and live for some time.
Because sometime ago there were squadron...
ironclad ships like flatirons,
black smoke up unto the sky, Andrew's flags,
?????
newest cruiser, pride of whole russian fleet. It had the best crew,
best commander, wonderful officers...everything...
But, but, BUT:
deckhand on duty understood something wrong
or radio officer had gone to have some smokes,
because whole squadron went this way
but cruiser - that way.
For sure, there was fog right away,
and couple of days in the fog.
Then fog cleared out and: OH....
enemy all aroud.
Nobody was surprised.
That is, enemy was very surprised.
They came back to senses right away, started signaling "Give up",
and ours, of course: we'll give up right way, we came here to give up...
All of them put on new clothes.
There is such good traditon in russian fleet
to die with new and clean clothes on.
Because everybody knows: now it's time to die.
And there are no jokes.
There...
from all guns, our commanders, best gunners,
first broadside to their flagship,
it lets out heavy fume and leaves the battlefield,
their admirals...another ship...
Anyway, their squadrons suffers massive losses, some of it is already
scuttled. Our crusiser is all smashed, all in flames...
but Andrew's flag hasn't burned down yet.
It flaunts up on mast and nobody is about to take it down.
Somewhre in casemate two deckhands are left.
That's why one cannon of division caliber is still shooting.
Shoots from right board and hits still.
Rarely, but shoots.
And hits.
There, in smoke...
two deckhands with hands scorched to bone,
they load their gun
which is red-hot,
blood flows in their eyes.
They shoot and they hit.
Then they sweep last shell,
BOOM!
Enogh, Kolya, let's get some smokes.
Silence.
Well, enemy squadron did some shooting,
they signaled: give up!
And on damaged captain's bridge of russian cruiser
wounded commander is sitting,
he throws white coat all in crosses [cross shaped badges]
on bandaged shoulder
places his dagger,
gets snow-white kerchief,
wipes off inside of mariner's hat with it
and writes something orderly in ship's journal.
Young helmsman comes up to him
and for the first time in his live adresses commander
with name and patronym:
Dmitriy Sergeyevich, everybody who's stayed