Nikolay Zabolotsky
Strolling musicians

Hoisting the tuba, like a golden
Load, onto his back,
He tramped, resentful of his lot.
Two others followed in his track.
One, hugging the shadow of a violin,
A hunchback and a vagabond,
Scraped away the whole day long,
Like a sweaty armpit wept,
The second, a past master at
And champion of the guitar,
Bore a huge sacrum in his arms
And the splendid song of Tamara.¹
The sacrum’s seven iron strings
And seven shafts and seven pins,
Assembled by a skillful hand,
Dangled at angles.

The sun sank over the squares,
Cabbies tore past in a crowd,
Like the wise men of Gotham
Got up on stringy mounts.
And suddenly, in the window-ringed well,
Appeared the tuba’s enchanting curl.
The blunt muzzle recoiled
And began to howl. A toneless eagle
Was its first sound. It came crashing down.
After it another rose,
The eagles turned into cuckoos,

The cuckoos shrank to dots
And these, squeezing the throat into a lump,
Dropped through all the windows round.

Then the hunchback, flattening
The violin under his chin,
Modeled a little smile upon
The abbreviated countenance
And scraping away at the strings
With the crosspiece of his bow,
He began to weep, the cripple:
Tilim-tam-tam!

The system filed on in order.
Invention swayed in time.
And each listener furtively
Wiped away the tears that flowed,
When on the windowsills,
In the music and the roar,
The crowd of admirers sprawled
In bed jackets and drawers.

But the divine of worldly passion
And champion of the guitar
Raised the sacrum, set it right,
And boldly gave voice to
The gentle song of Tamara.
And all fell silent.
The imperious sound,
Toneless, like the Kura² River,
Wondrous as a dream,
Spread...
And in this song Tamara came to life
Seated on a Caucasian couch.

Before her, wine-filled
Goblets sparkled till darkness fell:
Youths stood there,
Gesturing,
And the wild passionate notes
Rang out all night.
Tilim-tam-tam!

The singer was slender and stern.
Laboring, he sang in the courtyard,
Amid deep cesspools,
Laboring, powerful, direct.
Around him a system of cats,
Of windows, pails, of firewood,
Multiplying the dark world
Into narrow courtyard-kingdoms.
But what was the yard? It was a tube
A tunnel leading to those regions
Where I too was pursued by fate,
Where a cat, trembling hard
In the moonlight, gazed
Through the garret window³ into my eyes,
Like the spirit of the seventh floor.

___
1. A popular song based on Lermontov’s poetic heroine Tamara.
2. River between the Caspian and Black seas.
3. In 1927 Zabolotsky lived in Leningrad in an attic room, looking out on the neighboring roofs.

Translated by Daniel Weissbort