Песня о людях героических профессий [Pesnya o lyudyakh geroicheskikh professiy] [English translation]

Listen, I'm alive again,

I breathe in the sea air at the window.

The blue sphere spins and turns,

It spins and turns overhead,

Like an astronaut on the cold moon

I wait, that she would call for me - 1

Standing against the triumphant winter -

Spring will find us soon.

Time, I'm right behind you,

Time, I'm a day and night without sleep,

The blue sphere spins and turns,

It runs and falls overhead,

Like a diver, suffocating at the bottom of the sea

I believe that she still remembers and loves me,

I wait, like "natural salmon" in wine,2

For spring to open me up.

The mountains ripple - "One!"3

The surf bores holes in the stone.

The blue sphere spins and turns,

It dances and falls overhead,

I'm surrounded by the shimmering of methane,4

With a hammer I carve into the mineshaft wall,

Just waiting for a few words from you,

That you will make it to me.5

Eternity - over the cobblestone,

Almost invisible in the morning light,

The blue sphere spins and turns,

It spins and turns, wanting to fall,

Like a musician whose career burned out,6

I still believe that she will give me inspiration,

She, who has such great power,

The incorruptible spring.7

The city, wall after wall,

Naked - up to its throat in winter,

Vasya and Klava grieve at the window,8

And the astronaut froze to death on the moon...

The little sergeant didn't come home from the war...

In the tunnels the miner suffocated in fire...

The young submariner never came up from the depths...

The fallen dreams of the spring!9

1. Spring, being grammatically feminine in Russian, is always referred to with female pronouns. Female pronouns can also be applied to seasons poetically in English; and I think the song is more understandable when spring is referred to as "she" rather than "it."2. "Natural salmon" is what is printed on cans, thus the phrase means preserved or canned salmon, hence spring "opening up" the singer in the following line. Whether Russians actually can salmon in wine I do not know.3. This evidently is a riff on a Russian children's game, changing the word "waves" for "mountains". To my mind mountains and waves are absolute opposites; one always in motion, the other always still, making this line jarring and hard to understand. Perhaps that is the desired effect.4. Perhaps the hardest line in the song to translate, in my opinion. I'm still not sure that I have an accurate picture of what the original is describing - I imagine it to mean that the subject is inside the mines, seeing the shimmering of the methane fumes in the electric light of the tunnels. Presumably these fumes are what catches fire at the end of the song, suffocating and killing the miner. The first reading of the line is inescapable: "I am surrounded by methane eyes", which doesn't make any sense at all.5. The verb "доползать" in Russian means to crawl or to creep up to. Both of these sound bad to me for different reasons, first "to crawl" which implies a weakness on the part of the spring which to the singer it does not possess, and second "to creep up to" which is simply awkward. I think the verb was used to emphasize the slowness of the approach, but I could be wrong.6. Literally "whose career drank itself to ruin/death" we in English don't have a single word verb to describe this action, and the idea of a career doing such a thing is not very natural.7. Literally "not-sellable, not-for-sale spring" or "the spring that cannot sell itself out" I take the word incorruptible from the previous translation, as I think it a very good one to fill in the gap.8. Vasya and Klava are both names, the first masculine from Vasilii, the second feminine from Klavdia9. I gather from this and other examples of Russian poetry and music that the seasons are imbued with substantial poetic meaning, and almost in themselves describe entire outlooks on the world, entire states of being. The spring is the flourishing of life and hope, while the winter is despair and death. The "people of heroic professions" of the song's title are the wards of the spring, people of strength and energy and courage, inspiring people; all of whom are killed come the end of the song, meaning that winter is victorious in the end.