Здесь пулей не мстят, а обидчика бьют кулаком...

Here they don’t take revenge on a bullet, and they beat the offender with his fist

It’s loving that the next time it’s not good to lie.

Here women are full of health - oh, blood with milk!

They don’t look at fashion: their dresses are simple and elegant.


Here they know by sight and don’t remember a long time about evil,

Weak from old age, crowds of grandchildren are calling in huts,

There is little asphalt and a lot of wheat fields.

And at night from the vicinity pour symphonies of sounds.


Recently, I climbed into the womb of a steel horse,

I bought my old youth for liters of gasoline -

Now spicy air excites and beckons me,

And heals my urban melancholy and gloom.


There is no poverty, and there is no pompous wealth,

Here laziness and idleness, peace, silence and order,

In a quiet cemetery, grandfather was buried under willows,

And I wander near the house, among the dug up beds.


Sweet to me is nature and a modest non-fussing life,

Misty shawls and sonorous starry scattering

But only having been forgotten will I be forever forgotten

And now I dreamed of treating grief in people like smallpox.


Neon Peter is a huge Siamese twin

I’ve grown to you and it’s painful for us to burst,

I am returning back: a fugitive is going to your prison,

He proudly goes to the plane of a granite parade ground ...


I remember a girl in that small town

With a fresh blush: she touched her blond hair with a braid ...

Once I saw a drawing on a Russian shawl:

In love, I did not dare to go to a dear friend.


August 24, 2011

G. Stolin, Belarus

 

Pavel Volchik