The Ballade of Love

( Перевод песни Владимира Высотского "Баллада о любви"/Translation of a song by Russian bard Vladimir Visotsky)

When the waters of world flood subsided,
Returned below the borders of the shores,
From the foam of diminishing streams
Love quietly approached the land.
Love got dissolved in thin air before time
And waited forty years forty times.

There are still such mavericks among us —
They inhale a full chest of ancient mix
And do not wait for the rewards or punishment.
They think they only breathe,
But suddenly they follow the rhythm
Of similar, uneven way to breathe.

I’ll spread the fields for those, who love.
Let them sing in dreams and when awake.
I do breathe and it means I truly love,
I do love and this means I truly live.

There will be many travels and wanders,
The country of love is vast.
This country will challenge her knights,
Asking them for even harder sacrifices,
Demanding distances and separation,
Depriving them of rest, calm, and sleep,

Those insane, are never turning back,
Already they agreed to pay the price
Or even risk their own precious lives
To save, to keep alive, to not let go
Of magical, unnoticeable thread,
That was tied up invisibly among them.

Who got chosen, got drunk from the storm,
That knocks them down and brings them back from the abbess,
Since, if you never really loved,
Then you never lived and never breathed.

There are lovers, who suffocated from love,
They can’t hear us, call them or not.
They are counted by gossip and idle talk,
But this account is mixed up with their blood.
We’ll place the candles at the tombs of those,
Who died of love never seen before.

Their souls will wander among the flowers,
Their voices will stay within each other’s beat.
They will breathe eternity in mutual inhale,
They will meet, with a faint breath on their lips,
At fragile bridges, passages, and gates,
At the narrow intersections of the Universe.

I will spread the fields for those, who love.
Let them sing in dreams and when awake.
I do breathe, which means I truly love.
I do love, which means I truly live.