Mikhail Svetlov
Immortality

Romantic youngsters, drunk with dreams of triumph,
They've pedalled off to continents unknown,
Two angels on two bicycles fast-flying —
My love and youth, and left me all alone.

And now trying to retrace their route
With here a punctured tire and there a fall....
But steady! Here's a steep ascent — the date
That made me member of the Komsomol.

Nay, when I sally forth toward the future
I won't discard the past as a thing outworn.
What? Life's a river? No, it's all a quiver
With contradiction, whose main purpose is to warn:

For your generation — not for numeration
Hoard up your minutes as you'd hoard up gold.
But don't exchange the sterling of your talent
For jingling coin that soon grows stale and old.

Don't pay your country back with petty pence,
Don't be a nuisance to her on her course.
And then, when you have cleared life's barbed wire fence,
A poet's immortality is yours. Don't fear old age.

What's greying hair? Mere trifles
Plunge headlong in, cut straight across the whirl,
And death will come to you, no grisly idol,
But just a blushing sixteen-year-old girl.

What have you lived for? What have you created?
You can't recall? And yet you haven't lived in vain,
For he who buries you will call you to the rescue —
You and your poetry — again and yet again.

Although no kinsmen, your two spirits are akin.
Such bonds as these survive the grimmest death.
And therefore you must go through thick and thin
And live, live on while able to draw breath.

Yes, greeting the new day with kindly eye,
Cast off your numbness and, discarding fear,
Come out to meet your poetry, your time
Full speed, lull steam ahead, in full career!

So, reassured once more, dispelling doubt,
I leave the dismal office of old man,
And once again the sweet lass Youth holds out
Her rosy cheek, which if I want to kiss, I can.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg