My master — he disliked me from the start.
He never knew me, never saw or heard me,
but all the same he feared me like the plague
and hated me with all his dreary heart.
When I bowed my head before him,
it seemed to him I hid a smile.
When he made me cry, he thought
my tears were crocodile.
And all my life I worked my heart out for him,
each night I lay down late, and got up early.
I loved him and was wounded for his sake.
But nothing I could do would ever take.
I took his portrait everywhere I went,
I hung it up in every but and tent,
I looked and looked, and kept on looking,
and slowly, as the years went past,
his hatred hurt me less and less.
And nowadays it hardly seems to matter:
the age-old truth is men like me
are always hated by their master.
А мой хозяин не любил меня —
Не знал меня, не слышал и не видел,
А всё-таки боялся, как огня,
И сумрачно, угрюмо ненавидел.
Когда меня он плакать заставлял,
Ему казалось: я притворно плачу.
Когда пред ним я голову склонял,
Ему казалось: я усмешку прячу.
А я всю жизнь работал на него,
Ложился поздно, поднимался рано,
Любил его. И за него был ранен.
Но мне не помогало ничего.
А я возил с собой его портрет.
В землянке вешал и в палатке вешал —
Смотрел, смотрел, не уставал смотреть.
И с каждым годом мне всё реже, реже
Обидною казалась нелюбовь.
И ныне настроенья мне не губит
Тот явный факт, что испокон веков
Таких, как я, хозяева не любят.
«The scarlet of the dawn has woven on the lake. / In the pine forest the wood grouse are crying with ringing. There is an oriole crying somewhere, having hidden in the hollow. / But only I cannot cry — it is light on my soul. I know, by evening you'll come out by the ring of roads, / We'll ...»
«The high waters have licked / The bed with smoke. / The half moon has dropped / Its yellow reigns. I'm sailing a boat, / Colliding with the banks. / The churches have / Orange spires by the spinning wheel. With gloomy chirping / In the silence of the swamps / A black wood grouse / ...»
«The birch tree / Below my window / Has covered herself with snow, / Like with silver. On the thick branches / With a snowy trim / Have bloomed the tassels / Of white fringes. And there stands the birch tree / In a sleepy silence, / And there burn the snowflakes / In the golden fi...»
«Silence. In the junipers atop the valley, / Autumn — a roam mare — rubs her mane for dressing. Well above the wooded river banks — / That's the dark blue clang her horseshoes make. Wind, a monk, walks past with wary footsteps / Holding back the foliage on the pathways, Kissing, when h...»