My Virtual Reading Room

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  • Г. Гельштейну

  
  

Спешите делать добрые дела,
пока еще не склевана рябина,
пока еще не ломана калина,
пока береста совести бела.

Спешите делать добрые дела.
В колесах дружбы так привычны палки,
в больницах так медлительны каталки,
а щель просвета так порой мала.
А ложь святая столько гнезд свила,
анчары гримируя под оливы.
У моря все отливы и отливы,
хоть бей в синопские колокола.
Пока сирень в глазах не отцвела,
и женщины не трубят в путь обратный,
да будут плечи у мужчин квадратны!..
Спешите делать добрые дела.

Григорий Поженян

While lilacs haven't yet faded from your eyes

To G. Gelshtein

Hasten to do good deeds,
While birds haven't yet pecked at all the rowanberries,
While the branches of the gatten-tree berries haven't been broken off yet,
While the birch-bark of your conscience is still white.

Hasten to do good deeds.
It's so common to insert spokes into the friendship's wheels,
The gurneys are so slow in the hospitals,
And the chink which lets the light in is sometimes so narrow.
And the white lie has made itself so many nests,
Disguising thorn-trees as olive-trees.
The tides are always going out and out in the sea,
Almost making one want to ring the Sinopian bells.
While the lilacs haven't yet faded in your eyes,
And the women don't retreat, horns playing,
Let the men's shoulders be square!
Hasten to do good deeds.

(Grigoriy Pozhenyan)