Так пусть будет.
СЕНТИМЕНТАЛЬНЫЙ РОМАНС
A SENTIMENTAL BALLAD
Speranza, I’ll be coming back
The day the bugler sounds retreat,
When to his lips he'll bring the bugle,
And outward his sharp elbow turn.
Speranza, I’ll remain unharmed:
The clammy earth is not for me,
Because for me are your misgivings
And the kind world of your concern.
But if an entire century
Goes by, and you are sick of hoping,
Speranza, if it's over me
That death his outspread wings should through
You must command: let then the bugler,
Sore wounded, raise himself a little
So that a last grenade may not
Dispatch me with a final blow.
But if I suddenly some day
Don't manage to protect myself,
When the terrestrial globe is jolted,
Whatever that new battle be,
I'll always fall in the same war,
The distant one, the Civil one.
And commissars in dusty helmets
Will bend in silence over me.
February 6, 1966
(Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry Selected and Poetry, Selected and Translated by Vladimir Nabokov; Edited by Brian Boyd and Stanislav Shvabrin. Houghton: Mifflin, 2008.)
