To rule troika and guitar
Means: to rule each over
Woman, means: with old beer
To circle overhead!
O handsome one! Halfbreed!
Who baptized you? In what font?
All the gypsy snowstorms
Opened up your vest
O the brave guitarist!
Eh, I fear - your strings and hollows
Will discard me down to lie!
God be with you, driver Sergei!
Women are Russia and I!
Править тройкой и гитарой
Это значит: каждой бабой
Править, это значит: старой
Брагой по башкам кружить!
Раскрасавчик! Полукровка!
Кем крещен? В какой купели?
Все цыганские метели
Оттопырили поддёвку
Вашу, бравый гитарист!
Эх, боюсь — уложат влёжку
Ваши струны да ухабы!
Бог с тобой, ямщик Серёжка!
Мы с Россией — тоже бабы!
«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...»
«In the morning the bitch whelped / Seven reddish-brown puppies, / In the rye barn where a row / Of bast mats gleamed like gold. / Licking their pelts smooth, / And underneath her, the snow / Melted out in the heat. But at dusk, when the hens / Were roosting on the perch, / There cam...»
«I'll glance in the field, glance in the sky — / Both the fields and sky are my paradise. / Again my undone land / Is diving into the stacks of rye. Again, in the untended groves / There are inescapable herds, / And the water from the golden fountain / Is cascading down the green hills...»