"And take no thought of the inevitable battle
For the oppressed freedom of humankind."
More Perihelion:
Bob Sward's Writer's Friendship Series
translated from the Russian by J. Kates
Will I disgrace the name of citizen No, I do not have it in me to indulge my youth Let the young, not having guessed their fate, Let them in cold blood throw a cold look Let them repent when the people, having risen,
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When the fateful time
arrives,
And be like you, you pampered tribesmen
Of regenerated
Slavs?
In the shameful
embrace of idle luxury
Or allow a boiling soul to do nothing at
all
Under the heavy yoke of tyranny.
refuse to comprehend
the destiny of the age
And take no thought of the inevitable
battle
For the oppressed freedom of humankind.
On the calamity of the
struggling fatherland
And fail to read their own future shame
Among
the just reproaches of posterity.
Find them in the
embrace of idle languor,
When the insurrection for the rights of
man
Will find in them no Brutus or Riego.
J. Kates is a poet and literary translator who lives in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire.
His translations of the Romantic Russian poets will be forthcoming in an anthology of international Romantic poetry
edited by Michael Ferber. An Anthology of European Romantic Poetry in Translation, Longman (US) 2004.