Lyubov Sirota: Poetic photo-album "To an Angel of Pripyat"

The poetic photo-album "To an Angel of Pripyat"

Dear friends, on Christmas 2009 my son Alexander created and ordered from a photographer’s studio a especial gift for me: a photo album of Pripyat with my poems, titled "To an Angel of Pripyat". It was a single copy. But already in 2010 thanks to one wonderful and modest person, on basis of this photo album, was published a beautifully illustrated bilingual (Russian-English) poetic photo-book, in which are entered the photos of Pripyat before the Chernobyl catastrophe from the archive of the "PRIPYT-FILM" studio plus modern pictures of dead Pripyat and the Chernobyl zone from the archive of the site PRIPYAT.com. You can read most of the poems from the album here:

"The Chernobyl poems of Lyubov Sirota" and the poem "To an Angel of Pripyat" here:

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TO AN ANGEL OF PRIPYAT

To Olenka Chemezova, a young, talented pianist
who died of cancer in the summer of 1995

Touch the wounded heart
of the city still holding the warmth
of your lost childhood,
of the ghost of an echo of your laughter…

One touch of your radiant fingers
on the dusty keys of the city’s soul,
and she will regain consciousness, will wake up,
will escape from unreal silence, –

will start singing, begin to cry, begin to laugh,
the city's polyphonic organ.
The open heavens will be lit
with a screen of inextinguishable memory.

The darkened eye sockets of dead buildings
will once again be filled with the heat of human beings…
The city will hold its breath for a moment
while you will descend into your house…

And again a thousand voices from the street
will begin to sound the former daily happenings...
as though everyone were alive, and all had returned,
as though the city were still alive…

Touch! Pripyat is waiting for the effortless touch
of those who already in a higher world…
Of you, lovely angel – one of many
such pure angels of His.

Translated from the Russian by Lyubov Sirota and Debra Romanick Baldwin

"To an Angel of Pripyat" – in Russian.

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Also this poem and more information about the young, talented pianist from Pripyat Olenka Chemizova (who died of cancer in the summer of 1995) you can see in the article about the destinies of the Chernobyl women "Excessive burden".
You can order and buy the poetic photo album "To an Angel of Pripyat" in the online storefront "Pripyat Syndrome – The book by Lyubov Sirota" .

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In Russian see about this book here: http://planca.livejournal.com/13314.html or here: http://www.pripyat-syndrome.com/product/poeticheskij-fotoalbom-angelu-pripjati-/. Also the album is accessible in the National Museum "Chornobyl" (Kyiv, Khoryv Lane, 1).
Copies of cover and of some pages of the album: