Sergey Esenin
Letter to My Mother

Are you still alive, my dear old lady?
I’m alive as well. Hello, hello!
Let that ineffable evening light
Keep streaming over your hut.

They write to me that, barely hiding your fear,
You’ve gotten awfully sad over me,
That you often wander the road
In your tattered old-fashioned coat.

In the blue dark of evening,
You often see the same thing:
In a bar fight, someone has stabbed me
In the heart with a Finnish knife.

It’s nothing, my dear! Please calm down.
Just a terrible hallucination.
I’m not so hopeless a drunkard
As to die without seeing you.

I’m as gentle as I was before,
And I only dream of one thing:
To come back from my rebellious anguish
To our squat house.

I will come back when our garden,
White with spring, outstretches its branches.
But this time, don’t wake me up at dawn
The way you used to do eight years ago.

Don’t wake up the old expectations;
Don’t disturb all that didn’t come true —
I’ve endured loss and exhaustion
Far too early in life.

And don’t teach me to pray. Please don’t!
There is no going back to the old.
Only you are my help and my joy.
Only you are my ineffable light.

So forget your anxiety,
Don’t get so awfully sad over me.
Don’t wander the road so often
In your tattered old-fashioned coat. 

Translated by Anton Yakovlev