🚧Comrade of my spring
Valyantsin Tau LaiВедах беларускіх
Translated by
COMRADE OF MY SPRING
So it maybe our paths are not destined to merge then, my darling:
They have long ago drawn far apart — both mine and yours…
You will know about me by my songs, which cracking and sparking, will protect my springtime heart from confinement’s cold cares.
Go without me, my girl — may the birches not weep above you,
and not shake on your soul the sadness oft wafted by years, for is it worth grieving, though parted and knowing
I love you if our paths bear afar the pain we have shared and the fears?
I have parted with much, only not with our spring — that’s undoubted:
tell me, how could I live without that to the end of my days?
I recall, I recall, once with you a briar-rose we encountered, and we knew not if that was a rose, or our flowering eyes. Though the briar has faded long since,
it remains a glad memory.
I preserve its pale petals — a past recollection of all— and I bear it through life, unsubdued by the storms and by treachery, that my heart should be warmed, that the bluing horizons should call…
Should my pathway behind the high walls find a sudden ending,
Like a blood-sodden wing from the bars droop the flag at last — you must look, my beloved, through the leaves of the branches bending,
L** 1<M A
194
I
r.
I Bi Г i
from the borderland hill-post of spring
on my snow covered path
And my song will then trill like a skylark, to heaven mounting,
It will wing to you — then press it, though once, to your heart.
In warm sower’s handfuls our lives we have cast without counting, so that spring should blossom for others
in these martyred parts.
Translated by Wa__l__ter May__.
nnudlllfffliq
196
АЛЯКСЕЙ ЗАРЫЦКІ
VALYANTSINTAULAI