From Sergei Esenin (translation)



The golden grove has shed the conversation
of its green tongue, and quelled its birchen call.
Autumnal cranes in grave peregrination
no longer cry for anyone at all.

Who's there to cry for? Is not each man a wanderer,
arriving seldom and departing soon,
whom dreamy hempflields will alone remember
with a blue pond lit broadly by the moon?

Alone, alone amid a naked flatland
I watch the cranes wax distant in the wind.
There's nothing I regret, however haunted
by thoughts of youthful merriment, my mind.

There is no point lamenting squandered years
or the soul's lilac blossoms, swiftly gone.
In orchards, rowan trees have lit their bonfires -
the flames are bright, but they can warm no one.

Bunched rowanberries blaze, but not to cinders,
and grasses will survive their yellow death.
As branches, leaf by leaf, give up their glories,
so pensive words stream freely from my mouth,

and if one day time's windy broom decided
to sweep them all into a useless ball,
you'd simply say, The golden grove is silent
of lovely toungue, and mute its birchen call.



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