Sighted

On the night of May 3-4, 1944, terrible and heavy battles took place near Sevastopol, on the Belbek River, near the village of Belbek, the very one that would soon be renamed Fruit.

Ours rushed not only to Sevastopol - to the water.

Everywhere then it was salty: both from blood, and from sweat, and from the Crimean land, not generous with water for drinking.

The river flowed here along the beams, we were on a low bank, the Germans on a high one, and everyone needed water ...

The Germans did not want to give up water.

The Germans knew that after they would be kirdyk.

The fierceness of the fighting was outrageous.

Two days later, the Hans will falter and run, their shattered columns will be mowed down by front-line aviation, top-mast bombers will sink almost all sea transports thrown to the evacuation of the "valiant Wehrmacht", including the giants "Totila" and "Teya", and the Fritz will only die, drown or surrender at Cape Chersonese.

The revenge of the Red Army for the losses in the battles during the defense of Sevastopol in 1942 will be cruel.

Beating the enemy is merciless.

But on the night from the 3rd to the 4th there was a man-made human hell on the ground, and in the sky, and on the banks of the Belbek River ...

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By morning, the commander of the mortar battery from the second division of the 30th Guards Mortar Brigade, Lieutenant Eduard Asadov, miraculously survived, almost alone.

The battery mortars were destroyed, but the mine truck survived.

The decision was lightning fast - to deliver ammunition to a nearby battery, which continued to fight.

Asadov pulled the car, it was a stone's throw to go.

A fragment that struck in the face blinded him, knocked out his brain, it seemed.

Somehow he held on, did not leave the truck.

And lost consciousness.

It turns out that the last thing I saw was the shore of Belbek, explosions, fallen soldiers and a close second battery ...

Next is darkness.

Order of the Red Star for that battle.

Here Asadov recalls:

“...then there was a hospital and 26 days of struggle between life and death... When consciousness came, I dictated a postcard to my mother two or three words, trying to avoid disturbing words.

When consciousness left, he was delirious.

... I had not one hospital, but a whole clip.

From Mamashaev I was transferred to Saki, then to Simferopol, then to Kislovodsk to the hospital named after the Decade of October, and from there to Moscow.

Moving, surgeons' scalpels, dressings.

And the verdict of the doctors: “Everything will be ahead.

Everything but the light."

This is what I had to accept, endure and comprehend, to decide on my own the question “to be or not to be?”.

And after many sleepless nights, weighing everything and answering: “Yes!”

- set yourself the biggest and most important goal for yourself and go towards it, no longer giving up.

I started writing poetry again...

... I will never forget May 1, 1948.

And how happy I was when I kept the issue of the Ogonyok magazine bought near the House of Scientists, in which my poems were printed.

That's it, my poems, and not someone else's!

Festive demonstrators walked past me with songs, and I was probably the most festive of all in Moscow!

Doctors saved lives.

Vision was taken away by the war.

So he always walked - in a black half-mask.

And he was invariably loved by the women of the Soviet Union.

For my poetry.

With Asadov, nothing is clear at all.

After all, he had never seen a single book of his poems with his own eyes.

And there were 47 of them. Poetic, lyrical for the most part, as well as prose and translations of poets from Bashkiria, Georgia, Kalmykia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan.

What is surprising here: he was born in September 1923 in the town of Mary, Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - the roots, where would we be without them.

All his life, Asadov was surrounded by admirers at his endless literary evenings, which for decades went on in the halls of theaters and houses of culture that were overcrowded.

He traveled all over the Soviet Union, traveled.

And again, understand: I never saw a single face from that battle near Belbek.

As a poet, Asadov was not recognized by the poetic environment.

He was listed as a full-time rhymer of the plebs, read: the proletariat, but after all, we had a state - workers and peasants?

Yevtushenko, vile in his blatant ostentation (I can’t, it turns me off from the bottom of my heart, he will be rewarded for the “Prague tanks”) “subtly” taunted “simple girls with a couple of Assad lines under curls.”

Although...

What did the people say about Yevtushenko?

There are, there are good lines about Zhenechka Yevtushenko, unlike those of Assad, right?!

- "Two-faced bastard, corrupt bastard, bastard to fame - hype."

Asadov didn't care about that.

And, or rather, he, I think, simply did not notice this.

And again, nothing is clear with Asadov.

He had enough beautiful and sincere verses, and songs on his poems - once, twice and counted.

I believe... I believe that it is not only the snobbery of the guild that matters - the impossibility of accepting (for many from the poetic guild) life in all its doomed to the magical beauty of everyday life beyond human understanding.

Do you think a field flower or a pine cone is thrown away every time for each of us?

And we go like this to ourselves: “Oh! .. A flower is really good! .. It clings to the soul with a sickle !!! ... Oh!

And a bump!

The bump is like a dog, good! .. Straight out of the soul through and through !!!... Nature!

One word, mother!

Why are we so stupid?

Well, really?

Why?

Bump - she's a bump all her life.

A flower is a flower all its life.

How much is released to them - so much makes us happy.

Color five times a day without changing, and its own aroma too.

There are poems by Eduard Asadov.

If without laughter - like that field flower, like that pine cone.

They are.

And that's it.

You read them and the story is in front of you.

The most simple thing, but everything shrinks inside.

Because about us.

About each of us.

"The Ballad of a Friend" - read ...

Georg Ots, our divine Georg Ots, sang one song to Assad's poems - "Kindness".

Listen.

We talk exactly like this, with friends, with loved ones, with ourselves, and we talk ...

True, it’s a sin to conceal where we, orphans and in zipuns, should chase Zhenechka Yevtushenka ... We wouldn’t slip on snot.

If your friend is in a verbal dispute

I could offend you

It's bitter, but it's not sorrow

Forgive him later...

If you are in a quarrel with your beloved,

And longing for her is hot,

This is also not grief,

Do not rush, do not cut off your shoulder ...

And so as not to reproach after yourself

For hurting someone

Better to be kind in the world

There's enough evil in the world...

Georg Ots knew how to sing about this ...

As if water had spilled from a jug, but it had always been there - for centuries.

And thirsty.

And you shake that damned jug - but at least squeeze a drop out of you!

Spiritual thirst is even more terrible.

Today, spears are broken by all sorts of different "knights of the light" - around the poetry of Donbass - they say, it is not poetry at all, since it is from under a coal trolley.

Well, this has happened before in history... If only with Edik Asadov.

This is how they called him: “Ah! .. Edik Asadov ... Again he sprinkled a little book.

Honored disabled people can ... "

Lots of bastards.

With their diversity, they stand out in the animal kingdom.

Hands are itchy...

Just like a little one - to steal candy without asking ...

Do you know how Brodsky printed Yevtushenko?

Listen here:

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Remember: the level of the whole thing.

I remember the monument to Tvardovsky in the park on Strastnoy.

How he stands and looks at the ground, completely alive - now come and talk.

He looks into the earth, Terkin's brother and father, into the roots of the earth.

He looks, and we go by and it seems like he is not even interested at all.

Only now every line of Tvardovsky is his personal and bitter interest in us, the descendants.

To those who have not seen anything yet, but you have to see ...

I know it's not my fault

The fact that others did not come from the war,

The fact that they - who is older, who is younger -

Stayed there, and it's not about the same thing,

That I could, but could not save, -

It's not about that, but still, still, still ...

Asadov spent his entire long life in darkness (he left us in 2004, at the age of 80) and lived full of light and remained absolutely sighted every day.

Like a beacon on a distant coast.

He who does not know the sea - a century in one place sitting and standing, but how many sailors he saved ...

Poetry is not when the “atmosphere” according to Chekhov should be given to all kinds of fools, but when, according to the same Chekhov, people just live, day after day, remaining people in sorrow and sorrow ...

And in grief and in sorrow ...

How many people to go to bed with

How few of those with whom you want to wake up ...

So that we all do not live like Assad? ..

God knows...

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.