untitled translation of Boris Rizhy

I shall leave for some remote Northern city,
Squatting, I will smoke a roll-up,
I'll be pricked  by a dear friend accidentally,
He will sob over me when he sobers.

I know one cheerless place in medieval Rus,
Where cheerful people live for the day,
To stay there is scary, to leave is to lose honour,
To  gulp spirits - for soul; and to pray - into darkness.

What rivers are located in taiga,
What vastness unfolds in the morning,
Local women roam them and fugitive lifers
Are raising horizons into the third power.

Let me go, you. I'm alive only barely,
I'm nobody's forever, a Judas, a psychopath,
I am not in deep sorrow, but the gloomy, dark fir trees
Promise a certain deep sorrow ahead.


Boris Rizhy (1974-2001)

Translated by Olia Grebenyuk (now Hercules)