Mikhail Svetlov
The Song of Blind Men

Oh, the nightingale sings in the graveyard,
Oh, the poplars hum over grave-mounds...
Who can tell us how many poor wretches,
Luckless orphans repose underground?

I stand looking at somebody’s last home,
I’ve forgotten my dead happiness...
In the whole spacious world I have no one,
Not a dear soul to ease my distress.

Have a pity on us, though still living,
Ray of gladness, light up blind men’s murk!
The brass coin, giv’n in alms, has gone rolling
Down the blood-soaked, the spherical Earth.

We’ve no home of our own, no warm corner,
Over dark earth we drag weary feet.
Drenched with rain is our fate, lashed by storm-winds
Buried under the winter’s snow-sheet.

My whole fortune is easily counted,
All I own is a staff and a rope...
Change a hundred ruble bill, God Almighty,
Give us each fifty copeck’s worth hope.

Have a pity on us, though still living,
Ray of gladness, light up blind men’s murk!
The brass coin, giv’n in alms, has gone rolling
Down the blood-soaked, the spherical Earth.

Translated by Raissa Bobrova