Konstantin Simonov
Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov was a Soviet author. He was best known as a poet who wrote a popular poem, "Wait for Me," about a soldier at the front asking his beloved to await his return. Simonov addressed the poem to his future wife, the actress Valentina Serova. The poem was immensely popular at the time and remains one of the best-known poems in the Russian language. Simonov wrote many more poems to Valentina, subsequently included in the collection With You and Without You.
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Константин Михaйлович Симонов, советский писатель, общественный деятель. Герой Социалистического Труда (1974). Лауреат Ленинской (1974) и шести Сталинских премий (1942, 1943, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1950). Заместитель генерального секретаря СП СССР. Член ВКП(б) с 1942 года
“Wait for MeWait for me, and I'll returnOnly wait very hardWait when you are filled with sorrow...Wait in the sweltering heatWait when the others have stopped waiting,Forgetting their yesterdays.Wait even when from afar no letters come to youWait even when others are tired of waiting...And when friends sit around the fire,Drinking to my memory,Wait, and do not hurry to drink to my memory too.Wait. For 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 you waiting saved me.Only you and I know how I survived.It's because you waited, as no one else did.”