Poems and Songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. A Ballad of Fighting.

The Dark.Adapted from Pavlo Shostak’s translation by Akbar Muhammad.

Think thou well, there’s the dark on thy way!
Look, the sunset is heavily reddening.
There are contrary winds and slant rains,
There all courses look threatening.

There the language is brute
And the gossip is rude,
There encounters are hardly advisable
In the land where the grass has burnt down to the root
And footprints aren’t cognizable —

In the dark.

Combats test the people’s steadfastness there,
’Midst the mist and ungovernable tempests.
Hearts often stumble, abruptly ensnared
In obscure, uncontrollable tempos.

There the language is brute
And the gossip is rude,
There encounters are hardly advisable
In the land where the grass has burnt down to the root
And footprints aren’t cognizable —

In the dark.

There as sounds as colors are stark,
But to choose something else is impossible.
They’re awaiting my aid in the dark!
While there’s life, all is possible.

There the language is brute
And the gossip is rude,
There encounters are hardly advisable
In the land where the grass has burnt down to the root
And footprints aren’t cognizable —

In the dark.

1969.

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