"Vladimir Vysotsky. Selected Songs (translated by Ilya Shambat) " - читать интересную книгу автора

It was white waltz - the end to doubts of unbelievers
And end of childhood consolations, dreams and games -
Today the ladies did invite the cavaliers
And not because the latter weren't brave.

The ladies are called forth in time of ball
And waltz spins heads around, like long before.
But we must always answer someone's call -
To help somebody or get ready for a war.

Whiter than snow is the white waltz, spin now, strive!
That snow does not get interrupted as it falls!
She came in order to invite you to a life -
And you were white - whiter than walls, whiter than waltz!

Wherever you were - in the lyceum, in the tavern -
In palace halls, in school - whatever luck despite -
In Russia ladies did invite the gentlemen
In every age to the white waltz, and all was white.

Dulling the sight, not looking to each side,
Through the despair, silence, quiet, resignation,
The women hurried to come to our aid -
Their hall - the size of the entire nation.

Where you will go, wherever you will fly
Recall the waltz - how you were white - and smile, you'll learn:
They'll wait forever - and from sea and from the sky -
They will invite you to white waltz when you return.

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Mountain Echo

In the quiet valley where rocks do not stand in the way of the windstorm
In such places that no one got there or will get again
There joyfully lived a happy mountain echo
It answered the cry of mankind - yes it answered the cry of the man.

When loneliness comes up to throat as if with a stone
And moan once suppressed falls into the crevasse in the land
The echo would take up this cry that comes out of the throat
Augment manifold and then gently lift up in its hand.

Perhaps it was people, made drunk on a horrible potion
In order that no one would hear their stomping and shouts
Came over to kill, to make soundless the mountain valley
And they tied the echo and they placed a gag in its mouth.

All night they continued the bloody and cruel amusement