At the Enigmatic Lake Chad

(after Nikolai Gumilev)

At the enigmatic Lake Chad,
Amid the ancient baobabs’ shade,
Carved feluccas swiftly glide
At dawn with Arabs, proud and grave.

Along its wooded, shadowed shores,
And in the mountains, green below,
They worship dreadful gods of old -
Dark priestess-maidens, skin of ebony glow.

I was the wife of a powerful chieftain,
The daughter of imperious Chad,
Alone, while winter rains were falling,
I performed the sacred rituals we had.

They said for a hundred miles around
No woman shone more fair than me;
My wrists were adorned with bracelets,
An amber necklace graced my throat quietly.

The white warrior - slender, tall,
Red lips, calm gaze, a leader born;
He was a chieftain above them all.
My heart unlatched a hidden door.

And when the heart begins to whisper,
We neither struggle nor delay.
He told me even France had scarcely seen
A beauty to outshine my face.

And when the melting day would fade,
For just the two of us alone,
He swore at dusk he would prepare
A swift Barbary horse, well-grown.

My husband chased him with his bow,
Through forest depths and ravines steep,
He leapt the gullies, crossed the lakes
Where sombre waters never sleep.

And mortal torment was his fate:
Beneath the burning, merciless sun
He saw the savage wanderer’s corpse,
A body drowned in shame undone.

And on a camel, fierce and fast,
Lost in caressing heaps of hides,
Of silken cloth and beasts’ soft skins,
I fled northward, a bird in flight.

I broke my rare and fragile fan,
Already drunk with coming bliss;
I parted folds of my bright tent
And laughed, leaning through the slit.

I watched the sun leap, wild and young,
Reflected in a European’s eyes of blue.

And now - like a dead fig tree,
Its leaves long fallen, dry and bare -
I am a discarded, trivial lover,
Abandoned like a thing in Marseille.

To feed on pitiful remains,
Each evening, just to stay alive,
I dance before the drunken mariners,
And laughing, they claim me as their prize.

My timid mind is crushed by grief,
My gaze grows dimmer hour by hour…

To die? But there - amidst the vast, unknown lands -
There is my husband… waiting still…
And he does not forgive.

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Here's a link to the song:

https://disk.yandex.ru/d/17WQ0f-FW8VPWw

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The original Russian text of Nikolai Gumilev’s poem "На таинственном озере Чад" via the link:

http://stihi.ru/2025/12/18/8384