🚧At home
Васіль ВіткаВедах беларускіх
Translated by
AT HOME
Across the fence the cherry droops, Acacia gleams with yellow, The pumpkin on the forcing heap Grows warm, thrusts up its belly.
Surely a bat some twilight came And with its wing has brushed me, In the trenches I have not lain, Knew not the whirlwind’s rushing.
In no attacks nor battle-charge In no forced march half-failing, The well-beam, like a crane, stands guard Over our well’s oak-railing.
No billycan now in my hand, But well-known pail, I’m rubbing The towel with embroidered band On my face with its rough stubble.
A stack of pancakes from the pan Mother has tossed already, And once more in this house I can See myself, a boy, threading.
Listening rd sit, in winter time, On the stove, behind the chimney, To how the frosty evening chimed As with thin threads of linen.
At New Year in the pail I’d put
A hrivna in the water,
So that our house, stored full of goods °uld almost crack, next August.
й іушшншітажінййннпг’півжііпгіін
in spring, when the first thunder spoke, ! Jnjid run through the puddles, To touch my brow against an oak, To have strength in abundance.
Always to see good fate I knew A way most sure and proven, From the fields I wound have first dew And my eyes wash and bathe then.
From then my native look shines clear
Under a bright sky ever,
From them I yearn, through parting drear, For the bread of my mother.
Surely a bat some twilight came,
Brushed me with its wing’s shadow…
Before me stands my long-loved home, The brook, and there the meadow.
This I recalled in wartime days
When for our country fighting;
My land now turns on me her gaze, Her eyes are wide and smiling.
Translated by Vera
If HI
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VASIL VITKA