The violin weeps in shadows of Spring night,

The air is infused with lilac’s fragrance.

Wind sings along and whistles gently,

Aroma spreading out mixed with sadness.

In someone’s pain the heart itself has known,

The wound is open, the dreams are all in slumber.

The pain that heart deprived of joy again erupts …

Why weep again, the violin, why rub it in

That there is no return to past?

Why moan you of the dreams

That in a dream had passed?

In distant past that we call youth

I longed for Love like soil would long for water

Amongst the with’ring draught, like pauper

Earns for bread. I swam and drowned in Love

Without remorse, without second thought

Just like in ocean’s waters, naively thinking

That my Love will be

Like ocean infinite and eternal.

But ocean waves my passion wouldn’t accept,

Afraid of searing passion of my Love

And always threw me back on sandy beaches

Where solitude and desolation reigned.

But I refused to yield and never found respite

In peace where Love didn’t blaze I found no joy.

I plunged time and again in ocean of my dreams,

But futile was my fight with fate, my efforts were in vain

I always was repulsed and left in pain.

Don’t weep, oh, violin, please don’t awaken

The feelings long departed from the soul.

To part with Love is like attending wake:

Your loved one’s gone, but memories remain.

Don’t wake those mem’ries up,  violin,

I wasn’t loved and I was cast away

There’s no return to past, or you forgot about that.

I sentenced was to be an outcast

But Love that blazed inside eternity would last,

Its merciless fire would burn me out

Beyond the shadow of the slightest doubt.

But I kept yearning for the bliss of passion,

For unfamiliar feeling to be loved.

I knew the hate from years very young,

That’s why I was refused by Love, it knew not

That those who learn to hate from early days

Love cherish more than those who hate escaped.

I know, violin, Life has passed,

It  didn’t  wait  for  Love to find me.

My Spring is gone, its leaves long turned,

And yellow they shiver on the ground

In mortal cold and fear and they whisper

About the end that soon will come around.

Oh, how I hoped my dreams of distant youth

Would finally come true , but life has come to end

And Time has turned to past when we naively thought

That old age comes to people, but somehow it will spare us.

Forever young we’ll prosper among the lilacs’s bloom.

The memory still keeps the golden time of Youth.

Don’t weep,  violin, I’m still around

It’s my soul that’s dead

It found no joy in solitude ahead.

By Liana Margiva

Translated from Russian by Anatol Kardiukov