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From “Volunteers” Ilya Vladimir, Pennsylvania
I WAS born in Russia, but I am fighting for this land, | |
| Because I make my living here— | |
| Yet saving none of it. | |
| In my merry moods my motto is, | |
| Keep money coming and going— | 5 |
| Then you’ll always have some. | |
| Many people’s money is mouldy. | |
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| But in other moods I forget about that, | |
| For I’m always looking across the seas | |
| To the Russian plains, and longing | 10 |
| For the broad flood of the Mother Volga river, | |
| And the gloomy forests of Smolensk. | |
| I can see the lynxes fighting | |
| With the falcons there, | |
| And even hear the ravens croaking at night | 15 |
| As they divide the dead. | |
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| My mother I left there, and my sister; | |
| My mother weeping as a river runs— | |
| For that’s how we sing it in our old songs— | |
| And my sister weeping as a streamlet flows; | 20 |
| Their tears falling like the tender dew | |
| Upon the willow bushes and the moss. | |
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| They don’t know where I am now, | |
| Yet I can almost hear them singing of me, | |
| As in our ancient poem: | 25 |
| “Thou bringst, O Sun, thy warmth and joy to all— | |
| Where doth thy burning beam on Ilya fall? | |
| And hast thou in the desert dried his bow, | |
| With sorrow sealed his quiver, and with woe?” | |
| And I can almost see them wandering everywhere for grief: | 30 |
| Into the forests of dark oak, | |
| Where Sorrow cuts them like an axe; | |
| Into the fields where it mows them like a scythe, | |
| And into a damp earth grave | |
| That Sorrow, like a spade, has dug for them | 35 |
| Among the weeds, the beggars and the blind. | |
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| I hope none of this is true,— | |
| But I don’t know! | |
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