One more poem...

Ok, here's one more poem for you all. I just love this one - it gives me goosebumps! Actually, its a song I think. The author is Vladimir Vysotsky and the this particular translation is by Ilya Shambat (obtained from a Russian language learning website).

I'm not joking when I say that everything I ever learned about love, I learned from the Russians!

Ballad About Love
by Vladimir Vysotsky

When waters of a flood that swept the planet
returned once more into the ocean bed
from foam of a departing ocean current
love climbed so quietly upon the land
and disappeared in air before its time-
and for it there are sixteen hundred times.

And some strange people - there are some such yet -
inhale this mix with full chest that is heaving
reward and punishment they don't await
and thinking that they are only but breathing
they do appear to breathe, or so its seeming,
so unevenly, unevenly at that.

Only sense, just like a river boat,
for so long, so long remains afloat,
for before I know that "I love" -
that is, that I breathe, or that I live!

And there will be enough wanderings and travels
land of love - such a great land it is!
And it will be asking for ordeals
from its knights, before they can have bliss.
It will ask departures and despair
and deprive of calm, of sleep and peace...

But you cannot drive off the insane
from this land, they do agree to pay
any price - their life if that is called -
just so not to cut, to keep instead
the magical invisible thread
that is woven in between their souls...

The fresh air that intoxicated them,
knocked them from their feet, raised up again,
for if I had never ever loved -
I'd have never breathed, have never lived!

But the many that are choking on their love -
you won't reach, however you might shout...
counted by prayer and empty word.
But this count has been mixed in blood.
And we will place candles at the head
of ones dead from not having seen love.

Their voices have to morph in a single one
their souls must wander in between the flowers
to breathe with the eternity at one
to meet each other sighing in some hour
upon the fragile bridges and roads
upon the narrow crossroads of the world...

I will lay the fields for those in love,
Sleeping or awake, just let them sing!
I am breathing - therefore, I love!
I'm in love - and therefore, I live!