Demyan Bedny
My Voice

I sing. But do I really sing?
My voice has known the struggle’s roughening.
My verse is plain and homespun, every page.
O not on any glittering stage,
before a nice clean audience, mute in a rapturous daze
under the delicate tones of the violins softly singing,
my raucous voice I raise,
my dull crackt voice, where wrath and mockery are ringing,
The cursèd past has warped its notes with manifold abuses.
I am no lacquey of the Muses.
My hard sharp verse is hammered out, a workaday engagement.
You, my own folk, you workers, grasping all my rage meant,
only your judgment do I count as true,
you are the only critics who speak straight and try no ruses,
you, of whose hopes and feelings not one jot my verse refuses,
you, of whose rat-hole corners I'm the trusty watchdog, you!

Translated by Jack Lindsay