Poems and Songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. The Hill.

A Song about the Earth.Adapted from George Tokarev’s translation by Akbar Muhammad.

Is the Earth, as they say, burnt and dried?
Will a seed, as they say, never sprout?
Has the Earth, as they say, really died?
It’s not so! she’s just taken a time-out.

Mother Earth shall forever give birth,
Her maternity isn’t a fiction.
Don’t think that they’ve burnt off the Earth,
It’s not so! she’s just blackened from affliction.

Look! like scars, trenches run back and forth,
Bleeding guts deep shell-craters expose...
They’ve revealed threadbare nerves of the Earth,
Which unearthly unhappiness knows.

But the Earth shall endure any things,
She’s not crippled, though she’s booted and looted.
Don’t think that the Earth no more sings,
That she’s quieted down, diluted.

It’s not so! listen, she sings as she can
From each wound, and from each air hole.
Mother Earth is the soul of Man,
Boots cannot trample down the soul!

Don’t think that they’ve burnt off the Earth,
It’s not so. She’s just taken a time-out...

1969.

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