Aleksey Tolstoy
Through the slush and the ruts of the highway...

Through the slush and the ruts of the highway.
By the side of the dam of the stream.
Where the fishermen’s nets are a-drying,
The carriage jogs on, and I dream.

I dream, and I look at the highway.
At the sky that is sullen and grey,
At the lake with its shelving reaches,
And the curling smoke far away.

By the dam, with a cheerless visage,
Walks a Jew who is ragged and sere;
With a thunder of foam and of splashing
The waters race over the weir;

A boy over there is whistling
On a hemlock flute of his make;
And the wild ducks get up in a panic
And call as they sweep from the lake;

And near the old tumbling-down mill-house
Some labourers sit on the ground;
With a sack-laden wagon a cart-horse
Plods past with a lazy sound...

It all seems to me so familiar.
Although I have never been here.
The roof of that house out yonder.
And the boy, and the wood, and the weir.

And the voice of the grumbling mill-wheel.
And that mouldering bam I know,
I have been here and seen this already.
And forgotten it all long ago.

The very same cart-horse was dragging
Those sacks with the very same sound.
And those very same labourers sitting
By the rickety mill on the ground;

And that Jew with the beard walked past me,
And those waters raced over the weir —
Yes, all this has happened already.
But I cannot tell when or where...

Translated by Hon. M. Baring