Pioneers

Yevgeny Yevtushenko ,who was born in 1933, is one of the most highly regarded of the young Soviet poets.

I lie upon damp earth and hug
A spade, and let the minutes pass,
A blade of grass between my lips,
A rather sourish blade of grass.

In ground so devilishly hard
Spades break before they can strike deep;
And how I long to fall asleep,
But you are not allowed to sleep.

“You can’t get on your legs at all,
Just look at the poor dear!” she hoots:
A girl in a blue sleeveless shirt,
Her overalls stuck in her boots.

As luck will have it, she strikes up
A song that lilts, a lilting song:
“I’ll find my love, and when I do
Won’t I torment him all day long!”

Boldly she flashes her blue spade,
Jangles her earrings, for a stunt
Flings out a sudden word so raw
Even the boys look up and grunt.

They laugh, the lot!
“Eh, what a snake!”
“Well, Anka,
how she hands it out!”
The currant bushes and the stars
May know, as I know without doubt

That, past the intoxicated bushes,
Pushing the towering grass aside,
She enters the night woods with me,
Moving as with a drunken stride,

And that she drops her swarthy arms,
Clumsy as if her pulses failed,
And in the darkness speaks to me
Beautiful words and veiled.

Translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky.