Rus'
Here, spilling, the sorrow flows:
My homeland’s fields – meager, bleak.
Crest up towards the skyline and grow,
Oh, valleys -- crest up with new peaks!
Rough, shaggy – the far away smoke
Rough, hungry – the villages on the skyline
Rogue fog, shaggy, rough, spreads its cloak
On wide, famished realm in decline.
In grandure and vastness – your might.
In breadth, other breadths are concealed,
Yet, Rus’*, where to run from your plight
From drink and starvation, who’d heal?
Here multitudes starve and are cold
And, dying, depart by the millions.
Mounds: mournful and meager will hold
The dead, being Death’s eager minions.
Her trumpet through cities resounds
Through villages, woods, to the skylines,
The meager fields carry its sound
Through wide, famished realm in decline.
** Rus' - short form for "Russia"
Translator's and Professor Lee Croft's(ASU) comment: It is scary how prophetic Belyi is in this poem, it is almost as he is seeing past the Revolution and into the grizzly aftermath that followed.
Note the near rhyme of деревни/губерний, for Belyi more exact rhyme is the norm, thus I used similar sounding words, rather than rhyme in the translation: skYlines/declIne.
РУСЬ
Поля моей скудной земли
Вон там преисполнены скорби.
Холмами пространства вдали
Изгорби, равнина, изгорби!
Косматый, далекий дымок.
Косматые в далях деревни.
Туманов косматый поток.
Просторы голодных губерний.
Просторов простертая рать:
В пространствах таятся пространства.
Россия, куда мне бежать
От голода, мора и пьянства?
От голода, холода тут
И мерли, и мрут миллионы.
Покойников ждали и ждут
Пологие скорбные склоны.
Там Смерть протрубила вдали
В леса, города и деревни,
В поля моей скудной земли,
В просторы голодных губерний.
1908, Серебряный Колодезь