| Missa in tempore belli | |
| 1. Kyrie Lord, have mercy on us, | |
| if You are for us, who can be against us? | |
| Christ, have mercy on us, | |
| especially if our hours are numbered. | |
| Lord, have mercy on us, | 5 |
| especially in days of war | |
| Kyrie eleison. | |
| Christe eleison | |
| Kyrie eleison | |
| 2. Gloria Gloria in excelsis Deo | |
| et in terra pax | |
| hominibus bonae voluntatis. | |
| Glory to God in the highest — wondrous are Your works! | |
| Glory to God in the highest, and on earth — more war. | 5 |
| Glory to God in the highest — be not troubled, soldier, nightingales! | |
| Glory to God in the highest, and on earth — bodies flail, | |
| arms flung wide. People’s will is evil. | |
| Thus it has been and always will. | |
| We praise you, soldier, slender of neck, sharp of throat. | 10 |
| We bless you, soldier, who on bayonet raise up the foe, | |
| We lift on high your long dying groan. | |
| God is cruel at times, but still better than earthly thrones. | |
| We bless you, mister General, | |
| we glorify you, mister President, | 15 |
| you who have robbed us blind, | |
| did the Lord trample down death with death for your kind? | |
| “Yes, sir!” says the General, hand to visor. | |
| He’s taken an oath to submit to his own dear tsar. | |
| But his own dear tsar has flown up on a branch and cries, “Cocka-doodle-doo!” | 20 |
| He has a comb of gold, and a log in each eye, too. | |
| Be glorified in the highest, God, behold not what’s going on down here. | |
| The bullet’s a fool, the bayonet a good boy, one hit — and no more boy to fear. | |
| With the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. | |
| Amen. | 25 |
| Cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris. | |
| Amen. | |
| 3. Credo I believe that God is God alone, | |
| He is Lord of his own. | |
| He is the peace created by Him, | |
| He is the light by whom the world is illumined, | |
| And when battle flags fly, He is their Wind. | 5 |
| Out of black concrete holes the rockets fly. | |
| The unseen world attacks the world in sight. | |
| I believe that in Christ this God was made flesh, | |
| and was crucified on the cross in sculpture and on canvas, | |
| outside of time and yet within time, outside of space and yet on a hill, | 10 |
| between two thieves, a kind of earth-to-earth. | |
| But if life is a sea, Christ stands at the helm | |
| and steers the ship of the universe. | |
| A ship with hundreds of thousands of cannons on board. | |
| I doubt it can dock in the heavenly port. | 15 |
| Christ said, “I bring not peace, but the sword, | |
| and with it, the chance to lie dead in the earth, | |
| but when the reveille plays on the archangel’s trump, | |
| the graves will open right up. | |
| And the skeletons will arise and before our eyes | 20 |
| they’ll grow muscle and then a cover of skin, | |
| and they’ll tread the battlefield in delirium | |
| always, forever and ever, for weather of weathers, | |
| for trenches of trenches, for tranches of tranches, | |
| where once they lay side by side, feeding the lice. | 25 |
| And the lice grew as big as typhoidal cows on the kolhoz, | |
| and the tanks rumbled as good as armored tractors down the rows.” | |
| 4. Sanctus Holy, holy, holy, the Lord, God of might! | |
| In other words — God of the heavenly hosts, or of the heavenly lights! | |
| You went out with us to war, you seized the foe by the throat! | |
| You filled earth and heaven with Your glory like a jug with wine. | |
| You let the earth turn upside down. | 5 |
| Hosannah in the highest! We’ll see you around in the next world. | |
| 5. Benedictus Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord in a glorious | |
| and frightening time, a time of troubles, a time of war, | |
| blessed are those who walk row by row, each one shall be a hero, | |
| salvos three and into the ground they go. | |
| And once again — Hosannah in the highest! Hosannah on high! | 5 |
| The further into battle, the fewer heroes left behind. | |
| 6. Agnus Lamb of God, who has freed all people from deadly snares, | |
| Lamb of God, who has borne the immeasurable weight of our sins, | |
| Lamb of God, who has counted and pardoned every fall, | |
| Lamb of God, have mercy on us all. | |
| Lamb of God, Son of the Father, Light from true Light, | 5 |
| Lamb of God, Savior of constellations, planets and stars in the sky, | |
| Lamb of God, who crown your iconostasis, | |
| Lamb of God, have mercy on us. | |
| Lamb of God, little lamb lain on the altar, | |
| a time of war has come. Cinders rise from the earth. | 10 |
| Grant us peace, we are sated with eternal fire. | |
| They say, “We’re starting a war again.” | |
| Dona nobis pacem. Amen. |
