Sergey Esenin
Hooligan`s Confession

Not everyone can sing,
Not everyone can fall
Like an apple at a stranger's feet.

This is the greatest confession,
That a hooligan can have.

I go unkempt on purpose,
With my head, like a kerosene lamp, on my shoulders.
The leafless autumn, your souls in darkness —
I love to light.
I like it when the stones of abuse
Are hurled at me, like hail from a belching thunderstorm,
I just grip all the tighter
drew me, a moth to flames,
With my hands — the shaken bubble of my hair.

How nice then for me to recall
The overgrown pond, hoarse ring of the alder,
That there, somewhere, live my father and mother,
Who do not care for all my poems,
To whom I am dear, like a field, like flesh,
Like rain, that loosens the greens in spring.
They would come to pierce you with a pitchfork
For each insult of yours thrown at me.

Poor, poor peasants!
You must have become unattractive
As before, afraid of God and the swamp's depths.
Oh, if you could only understand
That your son is in Russia
Is the best poet!
Wasn't it you, whose heart froze in fear of his life,
When he was dipping his feet in the autumn ponds?
And now he wears a top hat and patent leather shoes.

But alive still is the fervor of a former conduct
Of a country ruffian
To each cow from the butcher's sigh
He bows from afar.
And having met the coachman in the square,
Remembering the smell of dung from native fields,
He is ready to don each horse's tail,
Like the long trail of a wedding dress.

I love my Motherland.
I love my Motherland very much!
Though there is some willow rust in it.
Swine's soiled muzzles and toads' croaking calls in the night's stillness
Are dear to me.
I am weakly ill for such childhood memories,
I dream of April's moist newness.
As if our maple crouched to become warm
Before the fire of dawn.
Oh, how many eggs from crows' nests
I stole, climbing on the boughs!
Is it still the same, with its green crown?
Is its bark still firm?

And you, my favorite
Devoted, piebald dog?!
With age have you become whiny and blind
Do you meander about the yard, dragging your flabby tail,
Having lost your instinct for where the doors and shed are.
Oh, how dear all these pranks are to me,
When, having stolen bread from Mother's,
You and I bit it in turns,
Without deceiving each other at all.

I am still the same.
In my heart I am still the same.
Like cornflowers in the rye, my eyes bloom in my face.
Spreading like golden mats, my poems,
I wish to relate tender thoughts to you.
Good night!
Good night to you all!
The scythe of the twilights' dawn has sung out
Today I very much want to piss
The moon from the window.

Blue light, light you are so blue!
I am not sorry to die in such blue.
So what if I appear to be a cynic,
Having hooked a lantern on my ass!
Old, kind, ridden off Pegasus
Should I need your soft trot?
I have come, like a stern maestro,
And glorified and praised the rats.
This noddle of mine, as with August,
Rains with the wine of stormy hair.

I desire to be the yellow sail
To that country, we are sailing to.

Translated by Lyuba Coffey