Vladislav Khodasevich

Peace to the earth of the evens and sinners!
Barriers, glasses, and pools are in a glow.
I go under the rain’s flows, thinnest,
My shoulders - wet and my hat is all raw.
Now we all are the homeless bastards,
As if we always were vagabonds here, 
And it sings to us– the rain, everlasting, – 
Songs of the Rachel’s perpetual tears.

Let our grandchildren create their ballads
Of fabulous fits of their great-great  grandfathers,   
In our heart, every day, as the bloodiest,
Most shameful of days, is left for the others.
It is our pest that, to God, we were thrust in
This real cold world – in the time of a fear!             
And on the pale cheeks of the old woman, passing,
Flow the Rachel’s embittered tears. 

I will take never nor glory nor honor,
If on last week – like I really saw it – 
She has received, as a parcel, a lone,
Oozed with his blood piece of his overcoat.
Under all our cumbersome burden,
All those songs, we can there sing and hear,
Have only one, one refrain that’s a good one:
It is the Rachel’s disconsolate tears.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, December, 2000