Sergey Gandlevsky. Shall I change the old record. Translation

cellinic

Shall I change the old record? Yet home is the dream I still see.
Loiter aimlessly here, in the crowd of the station,
I await the commuter, as planting is waiting for me —
Apple trees or some gooseberry shrubs. It is fall's termination.
And I dream that I'm dreaming of crossing the land far and wide,
Just to fix up a board on a shed, as the task is essential.
A perspective of dreams — dream in dream, dream in dream, deep inside.
In the garden I'm wasting my time, crouched and inconsequential.
Back from six legal acres I walk down the road, feeling beat,
As the train gives a piteous wail and the evening is falling.
I forgot all my matches; to turn would be certain defeat,
So I knock on a door, for some — what do you call them? — I’m calling.
Then a stranger, an old woman, steps to the threshold so low,
And she blinks and she mumbles, as if it’s her fault and her burden
That the weather is foul and the roads have nowhere left to go,
And that boys had a fight by the club in the Pokrovsky garden;
That I’m loitering here like a fool who has lost his own way,
In the wind of the autumn, with cigarette cold and unlighted,
As if she is to blame for it all, for the sins of the day,
And for all of the grief by which this, our homeland, is blighted

  • Author: cellinic (Offline Offline)
  • Published: April 8th, 2026 11:53
  • Comment from author about the poem: Russian English translation of a famous poem by Sergey Gandlevsky. Shall I change the old record (Ne smenit' li plastinku?), dedicated to E. Fadeeva
  • Category: Unclassified
  • Views: 2
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