Sergey Esenin
The golden grove is no longer laughing...

The golden grove is no longer laughing
And all birch trees stay silent, gray, and sad,
And flying by, the cranes care of nothing;
They go far and they do not regret.

Regret? For whom? We all are pilgrims here:
Come, stay some time, and then forever leave.
Our names, on the reflection of Moon's sphere
In a pond, are written by the whirling leaf.

I stay alone with a naked plain around
Watching the cranes who're carried by the blast.
Of older days I hear the cheerful sound.
Yet, nothing I would pity in the past.

Not any girl that I so much admired
Nor all these years that I spent in vain.
Let in the forest burn the rowan fire,
But nobody any heat can gain.

In flame the berries do not disappear,
They stay for the non-passing hungry birds.
Like trees shed leaves that one can hardly hear,
The same way I am shedding sorrow words.

And if the vortex of the time, lamenting,
Will rake them all in one unworthy pile,
You say, the golden grove is just ending
Its banal story in the flowerly style.

Translated by Vladimir Gurvich