В. Высоцкий-Баллада о борьбе. англ

Ballad of the Struggle
(The Ballad of Worthy Books)

Midst the guttering candles and evening prayers,
Midst the trophies of war and the campfire flares,
Lived the children of books who had seen no real fight,
Aching from childhood’s small sorrows and spite.

Our age was a burden,
The mundane a chore,
We fought until bruised,
Seeking something much more.
Though our mothers would mend
Every tear in our clothes,
We were drunk on the lines
Of our favorite prose.

With the sweat on our brows and a hollow inside,
From the sweetness of phrases we couldn't quite hide,
The scent of the struggle would spin in our heads,
Leaping out from the yellowing pages we read.

We sought to decipher,
Untouched by the fray,
Taking howls for the war-cries
Of some distant day.
The secret of "orders,"
The purpose of lines,
The clatter of chariots
And ancient designs.

In the cauldrons of old, where the great wars would steam,
There was food for our young, restless minds to dream.
We cast all the traitors, the Judases, cowards,
As the foes in the games of our childhood hours.

We tracked every villain
By scent and by blade,
And swore to the ladies
That love would not fade.
With a nod to our friends
And a soul-stirring vow,
The roles of the heroes
We claimed for our brow.

But a dream is a refuge where no one can stay,
Life is short, and the pain isn't far, far away.
Try to loosen the grip of the dead on their steel,
Take the sword from the hands that no longer can feel.

Don the armor of old,
Grip the hilt, still so warm,
Find the price of the metal
And weather the storm.
Are you chosen by fate?
Are you coward or knight?
Come and taste for yourself
Of a genuine fight.

When your comrade falls bleeding and gasping for breath,
And you howl at the sky o’er the first face of death,
When you feel your own skin has been flayed from your soul,
’Cause he fell, and you didn't—and that is your toll.

Then you’ll know what you’ve found,
What you’ve finally seen,
By the grin of the visor—
So cold and so mean.
The faces of Evil
And Lies are laid bare,
With the coffins and ravens
That wait in the air.

If you never ate meat from the edge of a knife,
If you sat on the sidelines and watched all your life,
If you stayed your hand
From the hangman and knave,
Then you’ve walked on this earth
With no soul to be saved.

But if, carving a path with your father’s old blade,
Salt tears on your lips were the price that you paid,
If you learned in the heat of the fray "what is what"—
Then the books of your childhood were right in their plot!