Holub: Five minutes after the air raid

A poem by the Czech poet Miroslav Holub, who was born in Plzeň (Pilsen) and was 15 years old when the city became a border city when the boundary of the Third Reich was moved right up to its outskirts following the annexation of the Sudetenland.

Pět minut po náletu

V Plzni,
v Nádražní třídě 26
vystoupila do třetího poschodí
po schodech, které jediné zbyly
z celého domu,
otevřela dveře
vedoucí do nebe,
strnula nad propastí.

Neboť tady
končil svět.

Pak
dobře zamkla,
aby snad někdo nevzal
Siria
nebo Aldebarana
z jejich kuchyně,
sestoupila se schodů
a usedla dole
čekat,
až znovu
naroste dům
a z popela vrátí se muž
a z nožiček slepí se děti.

Ráno ji našli
zkamenělou.
A vrabci jí zobali z dlaní

Miroslav Holub

My translation  ...

Five minutes after the air raid

In Plzeň
at Station Avenue 26
she went upstairs to the third floor
only the stairs were left
of the whole house,
she opened the door
direct to the sky,
froze paralysed above the precipice.

Because here
the world ended.

Then
she locked up well,
lest someone steal
Sirius
or Aldebaran
from their kitchen,
descended the stairs
and sat down,
waited
for again
the house to grow
and her husband to return from the ashes
and the children's little legs to be glued back.

They found her in the morning
fossilized.
And the sparrows pecking her hands.