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Pavel Antokolsky

Don Quixote

1969

Don’t fall, oh, you arrogant woe!
Stand up, inexperienced pang!
Long live, going out of rows,
The eminent rank of a crank!

He’ll be – and that, really, truth is -
A ridiculous miser in sight,
He’s girded by rings of the looser,
And winded by mist of a blight.

And somebody cries, “Make citations,
Don’t let off your sward, Don Quixote!
In warm of commercial actions,
You’re a nickel, but held in some sight.

And fight, getting dauntless and fierce,
With red wine in guts of wineskins,
With wings of the mills of fat millers…
For ages you’re famous for this.

Therefore, all burned as the good coals,
Defeated in battles for funs,
Amidst the rough puppets and dollies,
You chose your goddess at once!

She breaks poor heart of the fighter,
Refusing in all to the crank.”…
This puts in his prose a writer,
When he is impelled and not drunk.

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, December, 2000