I
Snow. More snow.
Onto the royal tower.
Day and night she paces around it,
her feeble voice laments:
“O prince, my prince,
be you beyond the Danube?
be you on the River Don?
Oh, give me news of your fate,
for I will surely die.”
The princess listens – but there is only snow,
only snow all around,
and beyond the field and the forest
the voice of hunger speaks:
Father’s at war!
Mother’s no more!
Who’ll plow the land, who’ll sow the seed?
O-oh-woe!
Oh, what desolation.
Here the princess begins again:
“Serve me, sail,
you black-browed wind!”
Somewhere the prince is sounding a retreat
with a handful of his retinue.
turn the arrows away from him,
send them back.
The princess listens closely – but there is no wind,
just snow and winter,
and beyond the field and forest
she hears voices:
We’ll turn you back!
We’ll send you off alone!
You’ll lay your body down like your prince.
like a stone...
Oh, what desolation.
“Dnipro, Dnipro, dream-sleeper,
You’re father to us all.
At least you must rise up – even without your prince.
to restore the kingdom.
A quiet kingdom, a righteous one,
one so wise in its laws:
so that some can tend to the land,
and others to the crown.
The princess listens closely – just laughter,
it’s just laughter shaking,
and the rumbling louder, quaking
from under huts and thatched roofs.
Has the prince returned from the campaign?
Has his retinue come back?
The princess listens closely – the clash of sabers and a salvo,
and the voices come even closer:
We’ll restore you!”
Oh, what desolation.
II
A strange flotilla glistens in the sun,
shaking the heavens with a hymn,
playing its wing.
They are the titans
of the black earth returning.
From a faraway fairy-tale land,
yonder, where the kings are.
The faraway fairy-tale land
killed the lord and master,
but not those
who have iron blood flowing
in their young veins,
who have sun-sprinkling song
and genuine laughter.
What is it rustling-ringing in the hills?
What is it shaking the dust
in the morning at dawn?
It is kings and tsars running away
fouling things up on their way.
Following them everywhere,
the workers become chiefs.
Above the hills, over the steppe
they’ve scattered in a threatening chain,
they’ve formed a single choir.
Don’t hide, sly foxes,
we’ll pull you out from your burrows!
They’re striking from above, flinging flashes of light.
only a motor is rumbling...
A strange flotilla glistens on the sun,
shaking the heavens with a hymn,
playing its wing.
These are the titans of the black earth
returning.
From a faraway fairy-tale land,
yonder, where the kings are.
Ladas meet them below,
and also the full range
of the recent disarray.
Like a woman – slim and cradlerocking.
a wheat field is grainfilling.
Farther than the sea, like an overripe sheaf of wheat
she’s dangling and rustling...
1923