sometimes even an exploding bullet leaves only a tiny mark. Likewise, all I remember from that war is how one day, towards the end, a horse fell off a platform when a train took a turn and there was no one to come back for him, no one to pick him up from below the embankment. Kids gave him grass, and he lay there with broken legs and a dull eye, charcoal black, like a sign left by the retreating night to mark a path for the night that was to come.

translated by Anton Tenser & Tatiana Filimonova