Belarus

Thousands and thousands, the storks are flying...

Their nests hang on rooves and birch trees,

On chapels amid the green rye.

Hushed plains tremble with the tread of bison herds.

These lands alone withstood the Tatars

And repulsed them.


Hills spiked with towns,

Humpback streets and lime groves,

The lakes resplendent on summer evenings,

Reflecting dark ursine forest upside-down.

Along the Neman ruined castles loom

Like mammoths buried, huge worn tusks

Protruding from the ground,

Ancient oaks like green thunderheads

Glower over the quiet banks...


In the east, moraine ridges and peat bogs,

Cranberries in autumn are gatehredwith scoops,

Pungent pine forests point to the sky,

the mushrooms are too numerous to gather.

in the southern swamps mating cranes

Dance in the springtime, hopping,

And gloomy forests stretch forever,

Pierced only here and there by sunbeams,

The ground steaming light vapour,

Primeval aurochs wandering in dream...

In the Dnieper lands are ancient towns

Overgrown with gnarled oaks, roses and sweetbriar,

And ducks take flight from old riverbeds.


Morning mist over the river.

splash of a beaver flopping into the water,

barking of village dogs at night...

a waterwheel murmurs as it turns

And swallows skim the fish-pond at evening.

Mistletoe’s sticky pearls hang in the woods.

The cried of wild geese pierce the soul.

The and oozes with springs, ponds and swamps,

Rivers, lakes and streams...


In spring cannonade sound above the river,

Ice floes star to shift ad crack up, clambering

Onto each other, ice castles, towers and walls

Appear and disappear instantaneously,

Ice masses battering against the banks

Desperate to bust free...

Once the villagers say they saw

A whole wooden chapel drifting on the April flood,

Celebrating Mass as it sailed away...

In the dark fir forest the wood-grouse

Utters its calls, a sound like the dripping

Of thawing snow...


In summer the orioles whistle,

The nightingales trill,

Hawks and golden eagles plane

Over the water meadows,

Cranes dance in the swamp mists,

The cuckoo foretells long life for him

Who approaches with good will...

At dawn huge pike splash among waterlilies...