Змей [Zmey] [English translation]

Ay, in a distant years

The land would conjure along with the skyes.

Marvelous marvels would be seen back then,

Miraculous miracles would come true by themselves.

Having forgot of a Golden Horde,

A motley rumble of the China valley,

A winged wyrm would often hide in a lonely garden

On a May midnight.

As soon as girls goes out to see the moon,

Walking stately,

He would grab one swiftly,

And soar up, and hurry back.

Oh, the glittering, the blinding, the shining

Of a copper carapace in a rapacious moon.

Oh, the silver ringing of a rythmic clench,

Flying over forests of Rus'.

"Such a swanlike beauties,

White as milk -

Never and nowhere have I seen girls like these,

Nor over the sea, nor in the East.

But none of them have ever been

In my lush palace in Lahore.

They die on the way,

And I drop their bodies into the Caspain sea.

Why those mad women

Value sleeping on the bottom amongst sea monsters

More, than sleeping in my mighty embraces

On a solemn princely bed?

And sometimes a envy a fate

Of a guy with a white cowherd flute,

On a grassland, with a crowd of girls

Enjoying his music so much..."

Having heard those screams, Vol'ga1

Would come out, frowning,

And put a bowstring on a horns

Of an old Białowieża auroch.

1. Vol'ga Svyatoslavich - on of the hero of Russian epos