Nikolay Rubtsov
Over eternal peace

I pulled apart by hands that dark thick bush,
But no smell of raspberries I found,
But when beyond the barns my way was pushed,
I found just grave-Crosses all around...

The dark is, there, unreal, calm. О me!
It's lone, very terrible and humid.
The ox-eye-daisies there seem to be-
Like beings of unearthly world eluded.

Remote was that cemetry of people
In those awful foggy still deep waters.
Up to my death I won't be calm and nimble
Because the things are, there, sacred, mortal.

The former years' holiness and grief
Were so much beloved here by soul.
That I would like to die falling on knees,
Embracing ox-eye-daisies, so sole...

Let life take me and carry far away.
Let snow storms whirl me. I don't care.
Let hope make me follow my way,
The way that man could hardly ever bear.

But when I feel the coming mortal day,
I'll come to look at my white ox-eye-daisies,
I'll see each person's sacred burial-place,
That, in the same white mournful shirt, he faces.

Translated by Lyubov Kalmykova