I
Kharkiv, Kharkiv, where is your countenance?
for whom is your call?
You’ve sunken in the clay of many rivers,
dark as the night.
You’ve sunken this way: between the hills
You’re stamping in one spot.
And suddenly you break through the bridges –
and already You’re in the steppe!
And already the wind is whipping you –
in chase, chase and pursuit!..
Hey! son of a gun,
here you’ve become unstoppable –
Here (just as the dawn flashes) –
what city center shout could match it! –
you hum and hum, and you’ll gush in a chord.
until the workingman comes.
You hum, hum... and when you burn out,
for a long time then, for a long time it echoes...
And it seems: somewhere... there... The Donbas whistle
answers you in tune.
They answer from the fog of the land beyond the river:
axes, saws, and a metallic ring...
That, Kharkiv, is your countenance,
here is your center.
1923
II
The streets roll past, the pavement clicks with hooves in darkness.
The marshy snow. The March marshy rain.
Just above a clock is glowing over you,
over your and over our head.
The streets roll past, a tram car runs across the abyss.
Land of the steppe! Oh, what an untamed land!
Just above it’s glowing over you,
over your and over our head.
Land of the steppe! Oh, how wild and violent is the wind!
When it strikes – it tears telephone wires, twists them into bunches!
And for a long time it resounds above you,
over your and over our head.
Far off through the ravines are misery and typhus.
Bushes beyond bushes...
Who is this beneath a shop window madly sniveling in the rain? –
A responsibility hangs above you,
over your and over our head.
Above your spring there is still such wind and darkness!
Here you leap across – there is no way out.
There you will stand – as though You’re really in the capital:
roof crowds upon roof, the streets roll past...
The streets roll past, the pavement clicks with hooves in darkness.
The marshy-snow. The March marshy rain.
Just above a clock is glowing over you,
over your and over our head.
1923