Esenin, Russ the Soviet / Есенин, Русь Советская (subs by V. Chetin)

The hurricane is through. We're just a few survivors.
A lot are missing on the list of friends.
I'm back again to a deserted country,
Where I've been absent for eight years.

Who do I turn to? Who is there to share with -
My dreary jubilance of being safe and sound?
In this place, as it is, a lonely mill is standing
As if a log bird with a single wing, eyes shut.

I am familiar to none,
And who remembered me, have long forgotten.
And even where once was my native home,
There's only ash around, beneath a film of road dust.

But life is boiling,
Life is going on.
Both young and aged faces scurry past me.
And yet there's nobody to nod to, capping,
There's nobody to rest an eye upon.

And in my head, thoughts change each other swarming:
What's Motherland?
Can this be only dreams?
For I'm a pilgrim here, to almost everybody,
A glum tramp on who knows how far a trip.

And this is I!
I, subject of a place
Whereof the only point of interest will be that,
A common peasant woman bore, one day,
A restless, rowdy Russian poet in there.

And yet the voice of reason says to heart:
"Collect yourself! Why are you irritated?
It's new illumination lightens up
The cabins of another generation.

Alas, you are inclined to blossom fall,
Now, other songs are sung by other youngsters.
They're very likely to be more attractive, --
Their mother's not a village, but the world.

Ah, motherland, how funny I can be!
The hollow cheeks are blushing with dry scarlet.
The tongue of nationals is alien to me,
I'm like a foreigner in my own country.

And here I see:
The villagers, on Sunday,
Flock by the volost like before a church.
They speculate upon their daily worries
With usual loud-mouthed filthy words.

It's evening, and the sun has sprinkled
The liquid gilding over silver plains.
And poplars hide their naked legs in ditches
Like calves hide limbs of theirs under gates.

A lame and sleepy-faced red-army soldier,
In recollection, tensely wrinkling head,
Tells stories, looking big, about Budionny,
About the Perekop retaken by the red.

"And we engaged him then, this way and that way,
That bourgeois... the one... in the Crimea..."
And maples frown the ears of their branches,
And women gasp to silent dusk, in fear.

The country Komsomol are marching down the road,
And, to harmonika, intensely bashing out,
Resounding the dale with joyous sounds,
Are singing Demian Bedny's touting poems.

Oh, what a country! Why the damn did I
Yell in my rhymes I was at one with masses?
Today, my poetry is no more in demand,
And, very likely, I'm not needed here either.

OK!
Excuse me, native place.
What I have been of use, I'm just as pleased with.
Though they don't sing my verses nowadays,
I sang them when my homeland was diseased.

I buy it all as is,
Admit above and over.
Agree to keep to the marked out way,
I'll pledge my soul for May and for October,
It's just my lyre I'll never give away.

Won't give it into hands of someone else's,
My Mother's, or my wife's, or else my friend's.
It's only me that she entrusted with her accents,
She sang her tender songs to me and no one else.

Do well, the young, and keep your bodies healthy!
You have another life. You have another song.
And as for me, I'm off for unfamiliar stretches,
Forever calming down in my rebellious soul.

But even when
On the entire planet,
The tribal feud ends up,
And lies and grief are through,
I'll glorify, with all
The essence in a poet,
The one-sixth of the earth,
By name as short as "Russ".

Видео Esenin, Russ the Soviet / Есенин, Русь Советская (subs by V. Chetin) канала Slava Chetin