VERSE 1 — (the beginning of the encirclement)
When the steel heart of Mariupol still thundered like a god
and the furnaces breathed orange like a second sun below the sod
the soldiers walked the catwalks with rifles like unlit prayers,
not knowing yet that fate was folding shut its iron snare.
They watched the ring close — street by street — district by district
and they heard the tanks singing their doctrine of extinction.
Still they spoke of home in fragments, of fields, wives, future days —
but you could see in their pupils that the world had set them ablaze.
PRE-CHORUS
They sealed the gates, they locked themselves inside the bones of steel —
If we are to be erased — we will choose how it feels.
CHORUS
Герої не вмирають
Her-OH-yee neh v-mih-RAH-yoot
(heroes do not die — even if their bodies fall)
Герої не вмирають
Her-OH-yee neh v-mih-RAH-yoot
(the earth remembers the names even if the world forgets them all)
Wolves beneath the furnace sky — they faced the end without disguise.
Герої не вмирають
Her-OH-yee neh v-mih-RAH-yoot
VERSE 2 — (the middle: starvation, bombardment, surgery in the dark)
In bunker-rooms lit only by cellphones and leaking flames
they performed amputations with no drugs, no morphine to numb the veins.
Water was rationed by drops — and hope by syllable —
They ate rust and dust and gunpowder, because that was what was available.
Artillery carved new corridors, new doors in the walls of the dead.
They measured days by how many rockets tore overhead.
One man whispered, “If they ever break through, and we are taken alive —
tell the world we stood — not to win — but so our homeland might survive.”
PRE-CHORUS
They could have run — but where do you run when the world is fire?
So they became the steel itself — the final human spire.
CHORUS
Герої не вмирають
Her-OH-yee neh v-mih-RAH-yoot
(heroes do not die — even if the body is ash and bone)
Герої не вмирають
Her-OH-yee neh v-mih-RAH-yoot
(the myth remains after the marrow has turned to stone)
Wolves beneath the furnace sky — in rusted hell they learned to fly.
Герої не вмирають
Her-OH-yee neh v-mih-RAH-yoot
VERSE 3 — (the fall)
When the last magazines were empty, and the med-kits were only cloth —
and the wounded could not stand, and the tunnels had grown too fraught —
The order came like a knife: the stand is over — save who you can.
And even then they argued: “We do not surrender — we simply outlasted the plan.”
They were marched out skeletal — not defeated — just depleted —
like statues of war whose souls had already completed
the hardest truth that any soldier can ever say:
sometimes victory is the fact we held the line one more day.
FINAL CHORUS
Герої не вмирають
Her-OH-yee neh v-mih-RAH-yoot
(heroes do not die — their last breath sows a future seed)
Герої не вмирають
Her-OH-yee neh v-mih-RAH-yoot
(remember them — when others only remember feeds)
Wolves beneath the furnace sky — you can kill a body — but not a why
Герої не вмираю
