ТЕРРИТОРИЯ (посвящается В. Туманову)

It all happened in the country before,
Devastated by a great war.
We all worked like in a dream
With the only aim to achieve.
To make beauty and impertinence
Meet in everyone’s unique fate,
Not to let money and emptiness
To interfere with our gape.

At the endless and spanless territory,
On which we have our homes.
It’s our native land and nothing more,
And moreover — the only one.

It’s impossible now to change
How we lived to the songs of dog sleighs.
In the Arctic we left to time
Winter boredom and sudden fun.
And there was also left a resource
To stock in the frozen earth,
Only this is no more for us…
We have done everything we must.

For the endless and spanless territory,
On which we have our homes.
It’s our native land and nothing more,
And moreover — the only one.

I don’t know who rules the land.
Very likely, it does itself.
Saves its daughters and its sons,
If there’s a war coming from the south,
If the rotten comes from the west,
And unkind looks are in the east,
If there’s snow and ice from the north,
The immense land holds it on.

The endless and spanless territory,
On which we have our homes.
It’s our native land and nothing more,
And moreover — the only one.