Bulat Okudjava

Don’t blame the foot, homeless,
for so illogical sometimes it is:
we go away always,
when over the earth are rampaging the springs.
And with steps unsteady – 
the ladder is thinness…
there’s no a chance…
And just pussy-willows
are looking, like sisters in white, after us.

Don’t faith in the weather,
when it’s poring out the rains, so long,
and in the foot either,
when ‘tis loudly singing the bravado-song.
Don’t faith in, don’t faith in
the raising o’er gardens cry of nightingales:
the life, bright, and death, dim,
Haven’t finished their bargain on these fateful sales.

We were by time prompted:
live, as if in a field you’re, 
with opened doors…
Hey, man, our comrade,
yet, tempting is it – the impatient dole of yours:
you’re e’er on a road, 
and only one wakes us a thing:
why off do we go, yet,
when over the earth is rampaging the spring?


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2002