In
clumsy, unwashed speeches
They debate their "life."
Evening's here. The sunset sprayed
The greying fields with thin veneer of gilt.
Like calves that huddle beneath a gate,
The poplars thrust bare feet into tht ditches.
Wrinkling his reminiscent forehead,
A lame Red Army man with drowsy face
Grandly expatiates upon Budyonny
And the Reds who captured Perekop by storm.
"We gave them hell, we did-this way and that–
That bourgeois ... the one ... in the Crimea ..."
The maples wrinkle the ears of their long branches,
While the peasant women groan into the silent dusk.
Then a band of peasant
K omsomols
descends the hill
And, bawling furiously to the accordion,
Sing Demyan Bedny's agit-verse,
Drowning the valley with their lusty shouts.
What a land!
Whatever made me shout
In
verse that I was the people's friend?
My poetry is not needed here,
And I myself, perhaps, unwanted too.
But never mind!
Forgive me, my native place!
I am content with what I did for you.
This day they need not sing my verse-
I did my singing when my native land was sick.
