Sergey Esenin
No, never have I felt so tired...

No, never have I felt so tired,
into this grey frost and mire
The skies of Ryazan came before me,
And my good-for-nothing life.

I have been loved by many women,
And more than one loved in return.
Was it for this the dark power
Schooled me in the ways of wine?

O endless nights of drunkenness!
And in debauch the old despair!
Was it for this the eyes devour
As a maggot devours a blue leaf?

Unfaithfulness no longer hurts,
The easy conquest brings no pleasure.
And the gold hay of that hair
Turns, slowly, into a grey flower.

Turns into ash and water,
When the autumn mud oozes black,
I do not regret you, bygone years,
I want to bring nothing back.

I’m so tired of this pointless pain;
A strange smile on my face
I love to bear, in a light frame,
The calm light and the dead man’s peace.

It isn’t even tedious now
To drag myself from bar to bar.
Just as in a concrete jacket
Man has padlocked Nature,

So, the wild fire dies within me, now,
Dictated by the self-same laws.
Yet still respectfully I bow
To those home fields I used to love.

And to that country where I grew
Beneath the maples, and played on the yellow grass
I send a greeting to the crows
And sparrows and night-sobbing owls.

Into the distances of Spring I call —
‘Into the trembling sky,
Dear birds, broadcast the news:
My scandalling is done.
And let the wind begin
Beneath the sun to tan the rye.’

Translated by Geoffrey Thurley