* * *
To faraway stars with soaring thrust
Rockets galore we fire.
People are lofty stars and just
To reach them is my desire.
IN AKHVAKH
To my friend
Musa Magomedov
Let us go where girls entrance us—
To Akhvakh return!
Are we handsome? Our advances
Shall they greet or spurn?
We’ll observe the age-old rite,
Setting hearts aglow.
Through a maiden’s window wide
Furry caps we’ll throw.
We’ll discover straightaway
Who the favourite is:
From her window back shall come
Every cap but his.
Palest moonlight I recall…
Silent streets below,
Where we argued life and love
All so long ago!
Barely grown to manhood then
I was never shy
In the company of men
Older then than I.
That spring night I found myself
Near a house, all set
To display the forwardness
I do not regret.
Plane trees murmured like the surf.
In an upper room
Was the girl whose song we heard…
Palely shone the moon.
Of the sun and stars she sang
And about her lover,
Urging him to hasten lest
She should find another.
As I felt my knees collapse
And my senses spin,
My companions doffed their caps
And sent them flying in.
This could easily be done,
So my courage grew:
Hard upon a furry one
My cloth cap I threw.
How my pounding heart did leap,
My breathing quicken, when
Caps came hurtling back, like sheep
Escaping from a pen!
When my cap with broken peak—
A duck with broken wing—
Hit the dust, I could not speak
Nor think of anything.