"Wait for Me" (Жди меня, Zhdi menya) is one of the best-loved poems of the war years. Konstantin Simonov, a war correspondent with the Red Army, wrote it in July 1941 for the actress Valentina Serova, whom he had left behind for the front. He later explained, "I just went to war, and the woman I loved was in the rear. And I wrote her a letter in verse."
Simonov read the poem aloud to soldiers on the Murmansk front in October 1941, but the newspapers refused it at first — too personal, too full of love, too little about hating the enemy. It finally appeared on page three of Pravda on 14 January 1942. Nothing about its arrival suggested what would happen next. Soldiers cut it out and mailed it home. Women wrote back poems promising to wait. Recited on the radio throughout the war, it was repeated "by millions as though it were a prayer."
The poem gives You, With Your Waiting its title. Its closing lines are the ones the novel keeps close: to be saved by someone's waiting, when no one else in the world is waiting anymore.
Wait for me
Wait for me, and I'll return, only wait very hard.
Wait when you are filled with sorrow as you watch the yellow rain.
Wait when the wind sweeps the snowdrifts.
Wait in the sweltering heat.
Wait when others have stopped waiting, forgetting their yesterdays.
Wait even when from afar no letters come for you.
Wait even when others are tired of waiting.
Wait for me and I'll return, but wait patiently.
Wait even when you are told that you should forget.
Wait even when my mother and son think I am no more.
And when friends sit around the fire drinking to my memory
Wait and do not hurry to drink to my memory too.
Wait for me and I'll return, defying every death.
And let those who do not wait say that I was lucky.
They will never understand that in the midst of death,
You, with your waiting, saved me.
Only you and I will know how I survived:
It was because you waited as no one else did.
As translated in Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945 (1964)
Жди меня — the original
Жди меня, и я вернусь.
Только очень жди,
Жди, когда наводят грусть
Жёлтые дожди,
Жди, когда снега метут,
Жди, когда жара,
Жди, когда других не ждут,
Позабыв вчера.
Жди, когда из дальних мест
Писем не придёт,
Жди, когда уж надоест
Всем, кто вместе ждёт.
Жди меня, и я вернусь,
Не желай добра
Всем, кто знает наизусть,
Что забыть пора.
Пусть поверят сын и мать
В то, что нет меня,
Пусть друзья устанут ждать,
Сядут у огня,
Выпьют горькое вино
На помин души…
Жди. И с ними заодно
Выпить не спеши.
Жди меня, и я вернусь,
Всем смертям назло.
Кто не ждал меня, тот пусть
Скажет: — Повезло.
Не понять, не ждавшим им,
Как среди огня
Ожиданием своим
Ты спасла меня.
Как я выжил, будем знать
Только мы с тобой, —
Просто ты умела ждать,
Как никто другой.
A reading
A reading of the poem in Russian with the translation, from Simonov through English Eyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVMhlRO2J2Q