Sergey Esenin
Feather-grass sleeps. Dear plain sleeps also...

Feather-grass sleeps. Dear plain sleeps also,
Also a wormwood, freshened lead in dark.
No other land could be compared, no one,
With my native country, warm to heart.

It is said, that we are surely destined,
You can ask that question to everyone -
Being in state of joy or rage or in depression,
Still it's good to live in our Russia.

Light of moon is mystical and long-stretched,
Pussy-willows, poplars're crying, whispering.
No one under the songs of the flying cranes
Could reject love to their native fields.

And today when I'm lit with new light
In new destiny, in my new life,
I remained just as in the previous times
The same poet of a golden log-hut.

In the nights, leaned back to my bed bolster,
I see as the foe before eyes,
How the new youth splashes a new soil
On my meadows, green with growing grass.

But, being pressed by this youth, I can sing though
With a feeling deep and with a smile:
Give me chance to go through my life new
With my Motherland and die with love.

Translated by Lyudmila Purgina