To N. Aseyev*
Night stands guard by blown-up bridges,
Horse has lost its way in mistiness.
Dying on the damp earth lies a laddie
Who for comfort could not care less.
Warm caressing weather freezes quickly
On the laddie’s parched and lifeless lips
And the gleaming stars of 1919
Fade from the eyes that will forever sleep.
He will yet let out a whisper and a groan
Faintly stir and then will pass away;
Infantry in tunics, soiled and faded,
Will silently come up to him by day.
The defender of the Revolution
They will bury on a grassy hill
So that Comrade Lenin in the Kremlin
Can no longer count on him for help.
So that in the dales of apple blossom
His young bride would all alone tread...
By the candlelight our girls write letters
Knowing not their addresses are dead.
___
*Nikolai Aseyev (1889-1963), a leading Soviet poet.
Н. Асееву
Ночь стоит у взорванного моста,
Конница запуталась во мгле...
Парень, презирающий удобства,
Умирает на сырой земле.
Теплая полтавская погода
Стынет на запекшихся губах,
Звезды девятнадцатого года
Потухают в молодых глазах.
Он еще вздохнет, застонет еле,
Повернется на бок и умрет,
И к нему в простреленной шинели
Тихая пехота подойдет.
Юношу стального поколенья
Похоронят посреди дорог,
Чтоб в Москве еще живущий Ленин
На него рассчитывать не мог.
Чтобы шла по далям живописным
Молодость в единственном числе...
Девушки ночами пишут письма,
Почтальоны ходят по земле.
«There is a love like smoke: if cramped, / It stupefies; give it freedom and, and / It will be gone... To be like / Smoke, but eternally youthful... There is a love like a shadow: by day / It lies at your feet, it heeds you: / At night it embraces you soundlessly... / To be as a shadow, ...»
«We are two trunks the thunder set alight / Two pinewood torches in the midnight blazing; / We are two meteors through the darkness flying / The twin-barbed arrow of one fate. We are two steeds whose beats are held / By one hand and whom one spur is goading; / We are two eyes a single view...»
«It’s rainy and dark, and a wind / Is ruffling the chilly pond. / Life will stay dead till next spring, / And the garden is looking so wan. / The house is draughty and lonely, / And too dark to paint in this gloaming... You were here with me yesterday, / But already...»
«What long-forgotten gleam is this? / An instant, through the violining / I catch a different strain beginning! / That low, deep voice of her it is. Of her, my friend of old, replying / To my first love; and I recall / It always on the days when fall / The snowstorms, blusterously flying...»