When my mother dear sent me
Off to the army,
Then my kinfolk also came,
Came a-running:
"Where are you going to, my lad?
Where you going?
Vanya, Vanya, please don't go
Into the army!
"The Red Army has enough
Bayonets.
The Bolsheviks will get along
Fine if you're gone.
"Are you going because you have to
Or 'cause you want to?
Vanya boy, you'll be wasted
For nothing.
"Your dear mother has gone gray
Pining away for you.
In the fields and your but there's
Much to tend to.
"Nowadays things are going
Mighty fine!
Look at all the land they've heaped
On us all of a sudden!
"Nowadays there's not a trace
Of the old hard times.
You'd be smarter off to marry
With Arina.
"Live with your young wife, and seek
No idleness!"
Here I parted with my mother,
Bowed before her.
I bowed low before my kin
At the threshold:
"Not a whimper from you, please,
For love of god.
"If we all were scatterbrained
And gaped like you,
What would happen to Moscow
And our Russia?
"Things would go back to the old ways,
Like those bad times.
They would take back what we have:
Land and freedom;
"The lords would settle on the land
As cruel masters.
In this nasty cabal's grip
We'd be howling.
"I'm not going to a dance
Or a feast,
This is what I leave for you,
My old mother:
"I am marching off now with
The Red Army,
Our deadly battle will be with
Gentry rabble.
"We will give a talking to
Priests and kulaks:
Our bayonets'll pierce the guts of
Those bloodsuckers!
"Won't surrender? So you'll die,
Go to hell then!
Paradise is sweeter when
It's won in battle, —
"It's not the paradise of drunks
Or bloodsuckers, —
But Russia, where our freedom reigns,
A Soviet land!"
Красноармейская песня
Как родная мать меня
Провожала,
Как тут вся моя родня
Набежала:
«А куда ж ты, паренек?
А куда ты?
Не ходил бы ты, Ванек,
Да в солдаты!
В Красной Армии штыки,
Чай, найдутся.
Без тебя большевики
Обойдутся.
Поневоле ты идешь?
Аль с охоты?
Ваня, Ваня, пропадешь
Ни за что ты.
Мать, страдая по тебе,
Поседела.
Эвон в поле и в избе
Сколько дела!
Как дела теперь пошли:
Любо-мило!
Сколько сразу нам земли
Привалило!
Утеснений прежних нет
И в помине.
Лучше б ты женился, свет,
На Арине.
С молодой бы жил женой.
Не ленился!»
Тут я матери родной
Поклонился.
Поклонился всей родне
У порога:
«Не скулите вы по мне.
Ради бога.
Будь такие все, как вы,
Ротозеи,
Что б осталось от Москвы,
От Расеи?
Все пошло б на старый лад,
На недолю.
Взяли б вновь от вас назад
Землю, волю;
Сел бы барин на земле
Злым Малютой.
Мы б завыли в кабале
Самой лютой.
А иду я не на пляс —
На пирушку,
Покидаючи на вас
Мать-старушку:
С Красной Армией пойду
Я походом,
Смертный бой я поведу
С барским сбродом,
Что с попом, что с кулаком —
Вся беседа:
В брюхо толстое штыком
Мироеда!
Не сдаешься? Помирай,
Шут с тобою!
Будет нам милее рай,
Взятый с бою, —
Не кровавый пьяный рай
Мироедский, —
Русь родная, вольный край,
Край советский!»
«"There lived on earth a humble knight…"1 / / This little book a poet / Gave me in the corridors / Of Gosizdat.2 / The book is torn and tattered, / The poet long since dead. It was said that in his visage / There was something of a bird / And of Egypt-so they said. / He had a be...»
«If I walk the noisy streets, / Or enter a many thronged church, / Or sit among the wild young generation, / I give way to my thoughts. I say to myself: the years are fleeting, / And however many there seem to be, / We must all go under the eternal vault, / And someone's hour is already ...»
«The storm wind covers the sky / Whirling the fleecy snow drifts, / Now it howls like a wolf, / Now it is crying, like a lost child, / Now rustling the decayed thatch / On our tumbledown roof, / Now, like a delayed traveller, / Knocking on our window pane. Our wretched little cottage /...»
«If beasts within a silent forest moan, / if trumpets sound, if thunder rolls and cracks, / Or young girls sing almost inaudibly / For each initial tone / The atmosphere resounds quite suddenly / With a response, your own. You listen to the peal of distant thunder, / The rumbling voice o...»