🚧To our native land
Janka LuchinaВедах беларускіх
Translated by
TO OUR NATIVE LAND
Thou art spread widely with forests and marshes, With sand-dune expanses that grant but poor living, My mother, my country, and thou in thy harvests No undue bounty of bread to us givest.
And thy son wears but a smock, poor and ragged, Shod but in sandals from bast-fibre woven, His coach is a pony-trap or horse-and-waggon, And the nag draws it onward as though soundly dozing.
Everything in thee is poor; oft the peasant Ploughman will weep, for his ill-fortune grieving, Labouring, toiling. He dreams not, however, That some day, far distant, he might ever leave thee. And the unlovely cottage, its goods poor and shabby, The niggardly field, common-land without grazing —
But we, having once clad ourselves in old jackets, Love and treasure these things, for’ours’we may name them. May God grant the sandy soil nourished and healthy, Made so by the ploughman with blood and sweat straining, A full belly is good, though we may not be wealthy, And on festival days there’s dram for the draining.
And the sun of true wisdom, through clouds’murky hollow, Will glance brightly down on the soil of our country, And our children shall live, in the ages to follow, With a good fortune, a fortune of bounty.
Translated by Vera Rich__.
JANKA LUCHINA