Sergey Esenin
Soviet Russia

For A. Sakharov

The storm has passed. Few of us survived.
Many are missing from friendship’s roll call.
I’ve returned to the orphaned region
I haven’t seen in eight years.

Who should I call to? With whom should I share
The sad joy that I’m still alive?
Here, even the windmill — that one-winged bird
Made of logs — stands with eyes shut tight.

No one knows me here,
And those who did forgot me long ago.
In the place where my father’s house stood
Nothing but cinders and a layer of dust from the road.

And life boils on.
Faces young and old
Rush all around me,
But no one I could tip my hat to.
I find no respite in anyone's eyes.

Thoughts swarm my head:
What is my motherland?
Is it all a dream?
To most people here, I’m a sullen pilgrim
From god-knows-what faraway land.

And that’s me!
Me, a citizen of a village
That will only be famous
Because a woman gave birth here
To a scandalous Russian poet.

But my thoughts tell my heart,
“Wake up! How can you complain?
It’s nothing but the new light of a new generation
That burns in the countryside.

Already, you've started fading.
Other young poets are singing other songs.
Chances are, they’ll be more interesting —
Their mother isn’t a village but the whole earth.”

Ah, motherland! How funny I’ve become.
A dry flush reddens my hollow cheeks,
As if I don’t know the language of my compatriots.
I might as well be a foreigner in my own country.

Here they are:
Peasants in Sunday clothes
Gather at the town hall as though it’s a church
And in rough, unwashed speeches
Discuss their toilsome life.

It’s evening already. Sunset
Sprays the gray fields liquid gold.
Poplars have tucked their bare feet into ditches
Like heifers at the gate.

A lame Red Army soldier with a sleepy face,
Wrinkling his forehead in reminiscence,
Speaks pompously of Budyonny,
Of the Reds’ victorious rally at Perekop.

“One-two, one-two, hell we gave him,
That bourgie that... you know... in Crimea...”
And maples frown with their long branch ears,
And women gasp in the mute semidarkness.

The peasant Komsomol comes down from the mountain
Playing a harmonica with abandon. They sing
Propaganda verses of Demyan Bedny
As merry shouts echo across the vale.

What a country!
So why the hell
Did I howl in my poems that I was a friend of the people?
No one here needs my poetry any longer,
And I’m pretty sure they don’t need me either.

Oh well!
Sorry, place of my birth.
However I served you — that’ll do.
Who cares if they don’t sing anything by me —
I sang when my land was sick.

I accept everything
As is,
Ready to follow in well-trodden footsteps.
I’ll give my soul to October and May,
But I won’t give up my darling lyre.

I won’t let other hands touch it,
Not my mother’s, not my friend’s, not my wife’s.
It only entrusted its sounds to me,
Singing its tender songs to no one else.

Blossom, young ones! Be healthy of body!
Yours is another life, another tune.
As for me, I’ll set off for the unknown realms,
My rebel soul forever brought to heel.

But even then,
When the entire planet
Is healed from tribal feuds,
When sadness and lies vanish,
I will extol
With all my poetic essence
That one sixth of the globe
With the short name “Russia.” 

Translated by Anton Yakovlev