Sergey Esenin
I’ve never seen women so pretty...

To my sister Shura

I’ve never seen women so pretty,
But, I must say, at heart I secrete
Not a bad but a good-natured envy
That my own young days you repeat.

My cornflower manifest — you are,
And you I shall love evermore.
How is our old cow there now doing,
Munching its sorrow of straw?

I like it when you start singing.
My heart with a child’s sleep soothe!
Is our rowan no longer glittering
By the window, shedding its fruit?

What does mother sing now to her spinning?
The village for good I have left.
I know this: a crimson blizzard
Dead leaves to the porch has swept.

I know that the dog we abandoned
Now plaintively howls at the gate —
There’s nobody there now to fondle him,
He mourns the sad turn of his fate.

But still there can be no returning,
And that’s why in such a short span
Life’s given me love, joy, sad yearning...
And your pretty scarf from Ryazan.

Translated by Peter Tempest