Bulat Okudzhava
Farewell to the Christmas Tree

Trunk color crimson and crown color blue,
Pine cones of green gently clinking,
There was the wind and the room it went through,
There they praised lovers with singing,
There was the wind and the strings that it brushed,
Caught in a long conversation…
January came in a maddening rush,
Stormed as a train past the station.
We got you dressed, fixed you up head to toe,
Serving and never complaining,
Our cardboard trumpets we’d heartily blow
Like we were heroes-in-training,
It even felt, for a brief moment’s beam
(Guess I was guilelessly easy) —
Face of that woman, the beautiful dream,
Joined with your triumph unceasing.
Minute of parting and hour of payback,
Day when the week’s getting hazy,
All of a sudden, there’s something you lack!
What’s with them all, are they crazy?
Mannered and fine like a nightingale song,
Glorious like grenadiers,
Where are their hands that were seemingly strong?
Where are your proud cavaliers?
Why don’t they gather, turn time back again,
Why don’t they give all their care?
But here’s the clickety-clack of the train,
Parting is so hard to bear!
But here’s the haste, time is always the boss.
Time makes its own hard correction.
And in the haste you are down from the cross,
And there is no resurrection.
Pine, oh my Pine — forest deer gone away,
All your hard efforts proved needless:
Trace of that woman, too timid to stay,
Subtly got lost in your needles.
Pine, like the Church of the Savior-on-Blood,
Your silhouette vaguely sighted
Echoes the trace of astounded new love,
Kindled and never requited.

Translated by Evgenia Sarkisyants