Баллада о детстве [Ballada o Detstve] [English translation]

The hour of conception I do not remember exactly, -

That means my recollection is limited, -

But during the night I was concepted in sin,

And appeared into the world in due time.

I was not born in pain and bitterness

Nine months - that is not a year!

The first time I sat my time in mother´s womb,

There was nothing good.

Thank you, saints,

That you spit and breathed,

That my parents suddenly

Excepted me without hesitation.

In these times discreetly,

Now - almost legendary,

When the set terms mightier

Dragged along in long stages.

They have been picked up in the night of the conception

And many - even earlier, -

But here lives the brotherhood -

My honourable company!

Sequence, quick thoughts, sequence!

The word, lines, love, the word!

The first time I won the freedom

According to the order of the thirty-eight.

I should like to know who has it delayed so long

I should pay him back, the scoundrel!

But I was born and I lived and have survived, -

In the house at the end of the First Meshanskaya.

There behind the wall, behind the little wall,

Behind the partition

The neighbours indulge themselves

In drinking vodka.

All live the same, modestly, -

By the hall-system,

In thirty-eight little rooms -

With one single toilet.

Here rattled the teeth

The comforter did not warm,

Here I was informed exactly

What a copeck is worth.

... Our neighbour was not startled by the siren

And mother got used to it by and by.

And I spit as a healthy three-year-old,

On the air-raid warning!

But not all that is above, is god, -

And the people extinguished the incendiary shells,

And like a little front support

Is my sand in the perforated jug.

It was sonny and in three streams

It was sieved through a whole in the roof,

On Avdokim Kirillidsh

And Kisa Moiseyevna.

She to him: "How is your son?"

"Without news - missing!

Oh, Kiska, we are one family -

Your are also concerned!

You are also - concerned,

And that means all Russian, -

Mine - without news missing,

Yours - innocently does time."

... I dismissed diapers and the dummy,

Lived - not forgotten, not forsaken,

I was teased "Premature birth",

Though I have not been born earlier.

Masked I tried to tear away

Prisoners were driven, - why do we tremble?

Our fathers and brothers have come back

At home to theirs or in others.

Aunt Sina has a blouse

With dragons and snakes,

That Wovchik Popov´s father

Brought as a trophy.

The trophied Japan,

The trophied Germany ...

Has arrived from the country of Limes,

A full Trunkland!

At the station I took off

My father´s shoulder-straps

And at the evacuation

Came a lot of civilians.

They have looked around, came to themselves,

With a hangover, then sober.

These who awaited the home-comers shed tears,

Who waited in vain, have sobbed.

And Witka´s and Genko´s father began to dig the Metro, -

We asked - what for - answering:

He said, halls end at the wall,

But tunnels lead to the light!"

The prophesy of the father

Has Vitka with the friend not listened to -

Has gone from our hall

To the prison hall.

He has always been a squabbler,

If he is pushed against the wall - he resigns ...

He has gone through the hall -

And ended at the "wall", it seems to me.

But fathers - have their own minds,

And what concerns us,

We have considered life

Completely independently.

All of us, almost until to the one-year-olds -

"Fighted" till we drew blood, -

And in the cellars and basements

The children wanted to crawl under the tanks,.

They had not even been hit by a bullet, -

At the "Vocational Schools" one could live carelessly:

Without presuming, without risking, but they risked

They made knives out of files.

They will pierce the lungs,

Black of nicotine,

Light to the handle

Three coloured sets ...

They had peculiar scuffles

These snot-nosed convicts -

On building sites captured Germans

Swapped pocket knives for bread.

First they played "Fantik"* with pedants

And then romanticists, -

Ran as thieves away

From the archway.

The speculator was number one

She was neither afraid of the neighbour nor of god,

Ended her life as a millionairess -

Pereswyetowa, aunt Marusya.

At Marusya behind the wall was being fasted, -

And she drank there secreetly ...

But she fell down - beside the door, -

That was not nice, she died badly.

Profiteering is like a drug, -

She could not stand it

The rich aunt

Marusya Pereswyetowa.

But it was all routine:

Who looks - is disappointed.

Especially offended

By her riches was a construction worker at the metro.

He has demolished the house and told us:

"First wipe your noses,

And I, for what have I fought?!" -

And different epithetons.

It has been the time and there were the cellars,

Thus it happened and prices fell,

And the channels floated where they should,

And at the end, where they should, they empted.

The children of the former superiors and majors

Have risen to dangerous heights.

Because on all halls

It seems to them easier - down.

• Artist:Vladimir Vysotsky