This poem is in three parts. The first, used in the video above, is re-printed below. See the original link for the other two portions:
TO PRIPYAT1
by Liubov Sirota
Translated from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta Ritchie
1.
We can neither expiate nor rectify
the mistakes and misery of that April.
The bowed shoulders of a conscience awakened
must bear the burden of torment for life.
It’s impossible, believe me,
to overpower
or overhaul
our pain for the lost home.
Pain will endure in the beating hearts
stamped by the memory of fear.
There,
surrounded by prickly bitterness,
our puzzled town asks:
since it loves us
and forgives everything,
why was it abandoned forever?
The images used in the video were taken from Gerd Ludwig’s long-term project entitled “The Long Shadow of Chernobyl.”2