A.Blok, Aviator - Translation (Rus.) Poem by Lyudmila Purgina

By Alexander Blok

The flyer is released to freedom,
Having swung his two blades, as a beast
Into the water of the sea,
He slipped into the air streams.

His blades are singing, as the strings...
Look: he, without trembling, speeds
His flight, trying the blind sun reach,
Above the tribune mute and still.

And there in the height unreachable
Shines copper of the working engine...
And there hardly even seen, or
Heard - the propeller's going to sing...

After that vainly you were looking -
You failed to find a trace of it;
In your field-glass, raised up, you surely
Would find only the air - clear...

And here, in the heat, which's throbbing
Above the wide field and smoking,
There are the hangers, people - earthly -
All as if pressed near to earth.

But once again in gold haze there,
As if the heaven's hord is heard...
The moment of the applauses - near,
And a rather poor world record!

And lower is the spiral descent,
And streeper is the curl of blades,
And suddenly...Such an event ridiculous,
And ugly in the constant flow- break...

The beast with stopped screws has hung awkwardly
At corner terrible... The searching eyes
Can't find that time the point over
The sky, the clear empty sky!

And it is late: on grass there's lying
The bow of the crumpled wing...
And in the net of mashine wires
There is a hand - as dead as thing...

Why for you've been in sky, the brave man
For your first time, for your last time?
Is that for purpose to a court lioness
To glance at you with violet eyes?

Or the delight of self-oblivion
You've just experienced to end,
And thence you craved for the fall immediate
By stopping crews by own self?

Or you were poisoned in a whole
With images of future wars:
The flyer in the night, who is going
To throw dinamit on earth?

1910-jan 1911