Sergey Esenin
Low house with pale-blue shutters...

Low house with pale-blue shutters,
I could never forget you.
Too many were the recent years
Extinguished in the recent dusk.

Even today I still dream
Of our paddock, field and grove;
Enclosed by the grey cotton print
Of those poor Northern skies I love.

There’s no more pleasure for me there;
I would not plunge into its woods.
And yet I know I have forever
The sadly tender Russian soul.

I used to love the grey cranes borne
Honking into meagre distance,
Because they never saw the corn
Replete in the fields’ expanse.

They only saw the birch-trees flower,
The leaf-stripped willows, bowed and dry;
And heard the bandit whistling
From which it were easy to die.

And if I wanted not to love —
Alas, it cannot be unlearned.
My native fields are sweet to me
Beneath the cut-price cotton skies.

And that is why of late the days
No longer young sweep by in years;
Why I could never forget you,
Low house with pale-blue shutters.

Translated by Geoffrey Thurley