Некому березу заломати [Nekomu berezu zalomati] [English translation]

Put away the brass pipes!

Stretch the strings made of steel!

You will break your teeth otherwise

Against our vast sullen fields.

Sparks of the most earnest songs

Will fly like ash at the mold.

All of you are between spoons and lies,

And all of us are between wolves and lice.

Time of another universe

Bursts in drafts through the rifts.

Icy black holes -

Windows of a parallel world!

Cards negligently dealt,

Windows christened with bars.

You were forging us horseshoes,

We were paying a heavy price.

You were shaving slivers off wood,

We were putting the roots down anew.

You were tossing us copper coins

Only past our hat of thorns.

You can't even dream of our troubles,

Our thoughts never burned your ears –

You'd probably choke on them,

But we're fine – simply licked our lips.

Only clouds of yearning and sadness

Are above the land of hoary forests,

Cities blossom with bruises,

Villages – with plague sores.

All over – trenches, impassable roads,

Brothers, are you in a haste for the river?

Round the neck is a hundred-pood1 rock –

It's too early, guys, for a swimming!

The water is good and frigid,

But within a deep vortex is hidden –

We can't drink our fill, nor wash our faces,

Nor tear through the snarl of eyelashes.

Here's your footpath back home,

Meander to your native dugout,

And is it a christening there or a wake –

All the same – a party and a drinking bout.

A wandering outlander

Will be struck by the lively poorness,

By our hearty uncommon power,

By our mean cherished foolishness.

Let's roll out a sour cabbage barrel,

Let's bake vatrushka2 with no dough.

What, the outdoors is yet barren?

Well, the inside is still overcrowded…

Here's your honey brew,

Berry-hellcat-poison.

Here's, my friend, Prague for you,

And here's, buddy, Warsaw.

Let's have a hoarse laugh of the ill,

About what – pretty anything.

If the morns are quite dull,

The eves are quite frightening.

Seven huddle on one seat,

All the world on jail-bunks and stove-beds.

Hush-hush, my child, fall asleep.

There's no one to bend the birch tree!

1. Pood is an old Russian unit of mass. The adjective "hundred-pood" means "massive, extremely heavy".2. Vatrushka is a type of traditional Slavic pastry formed as a ring of dough with quark cheese in the middle.

• Artist:Alexander Bashlachev