Poems and Songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. The Hill.

List. Text. Translation. Forward.

Commentary to the song “He Was Shot in the Fighting”.

Here comes to mind Rasul Gamzatov’s song “The Cranes” (1968) (this text is adapted from Marc Almond, David Bennett and Anonymous’ translations):

Sometimes it seems to me that our soldiers,
Who came not home from bloody battle plains,
Instead of coming down into the cold ground,
Have taken the form of beautiful white cranes.

Till our very time from those remote days,
They fly above, and reaches us their cry.
Is it for this we, growing silent, often
Gaze melancholy up into the sky?

I’m watching a crane wedge on expedition,
As it flies through a haze toward the dawn.
In this formation, there’s a free position,
Which, maybe, will be my one, when I’m gone.

One day through such a haze I’ll, too, be flying,
I’ll enter a crane wedge on my rebirth,
And, from above, with crane trump I’ll be crying
To all of you I left upon the earth.

Sometimes it seems to me that our soldiers,
Who came not home from bloody battle plains,
Instead of coming down into the cold ground,
Have taken the form of beautiful white cranes.

“Our dead men haven’t passed over, and light up our way, they’ll for ever be our faithful sentinels,” wrote Vladimir Vysotsky, and it is really so. The author of this publication has been visited many times in his dreams by his friends who have already left this world — they have shown him the right way, informed about a fa­vor­able outcome of important matters in the future, confirmed his rightness, or simply said goodbye.

The song was performed in the films “Our Sons Go to the Battle” (1969) and “The ‘Mercedes’ Leaves the Chase” (1980).

The presented text is adapted from Sergey Roy and Alec Vagapov’s translations.

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