N.Zabolotsky, The Unbeautiful Girl - Translation (Rus.) Poem by Lyudmila Purgina

N.Zabolotsky, The Unbeautiful Girl - Translation (Rus.)



The unbeautiful girl
by Nikolai Zabolotzky

Among the other playing children she
Seems to be a little awful frogling.
The pants tucked in her poor shirt you see,
The curly hair - tousled all and nodding,
The curve teeth and the mouth long on face,
The features're sharp and ugly to disgrace.

The fathers recently have bought the bicyles
For two boys of the same age, and today
They're driving round court yard joyously,
Despite of dinner, everything away,
She's running after them so gay.
The boy's fun does exist there in her self,
She tries to pour the feelings out,
And she is laughing and rejoicing with them
This happy Being shouting aloud.

No any shade of envy or a poor thought
This creature does not know till the day.
And everything is new around her,
All is alive, that someone throws away!
I don't wish to think, that years later
It will be day, when she would burst to cry
While seeing truth and turning into horror
With view as plain girl in comparison to other!
I wish then to believe, that pure flame,
Which's shining in her inner soul,
Would diminish then all her pain
And throw off the heaviest inner stone.
So let's her features neither be so good,
Nor she could lure someone's fancy cent, -
Her infantile grace of soul should
Shine though any of her vivid movements.

And if it's so, what's then the Beauty?
Why do the people deify its mode?
May be it is the vessel with futility,
Or fire twinkling in the vessel infold?

1955

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In russian:
http: //www.stihi.ru/2010/11/09/2232

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Lyudmila Purgina

Lyudmila Purgina

Russian Federation
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