Speaking In Tongues

Scribbling In Voices

YURY SHEVCHUK

(DDT)

Translated by Dmitry Kovalenin



Motherland

A Church







MOTHERLAND


Jesus,

Look how long I've been going

without even taking a step

Jesus,

Look how long I've been looking around

for what's always within

See how long I've been gnawing

only at raw Love

instead of bread

See how much of my life

was spit into my temple

from black barrels of that promised future ahead!


Headlights turned off at the neighbor's side

Buttercups-handcuffs, a mouth torn wide -

See how often my head rolled upside down

From the overflowed block to the ground all around my


Motherland

I'm going back to Motherland

They're screaming she's a lousy brand -

But still we like her, do not we

Though she's not a beauty queen -

Trusting in the riff-raff around,

And with us only "Tra-la-la-la.....................HEY COMMANDER!"


Jesus -

How much truth can be found

in the eyes of State whores

Jesus -

How much faith in the hands

of retired hangmen

Don't you let them roll up their sleeves once again

Don't you let them roll up their sleeves once again

For their nights without end -


Headlights turned off at the neighbor's side

Buttercups-handcuffs, a mouth torn wide -

See how often my head rolled upside down

From the overflowed block to the ground all around my


Motherland

I'm going back to Motherland

Let them call her fuzzy brand,

We like her even ugly done

A beauty but the sleeping one

Trusting all the riff-raff around

But with us only "Tra-la-la-la........................HEY COMMANDER!"


Out from under black shirts here the red rooster comes

Out from kind-hearted Czars here the marmalade flows

Never happened this sky had a room for two suns

If our Father was God, then the devil was


Motherland...






A CHURCH


A church without a cross

I'm flying, my hands spread out

Along the sleepy shores

Of Torment stoned forever


I'm faith without roots

A truth with no beginning

Hey, did you hear it screaming -

The soul amidst the woods?


A bird without a sky

A stone-like frozen echo

A sad and mourning sign

Of places hard to reckon


By midnight moon my wounds

Are bandaged up with dead white

My domes in misty daylight

Turned gray like graveyard tombs


A church without a cross

I flow down into damp soil

Still heeding words of dead souls

By dripping in the frost


A mem'ry with no heart

My wits lack aspiration

A cold and faded star

Of missing generations


Pitch dark are my insides -

Tattoos about treason

Lone window broken blind

Wrecked walls without breathing


Tomorrow I'll decease

Explode above the river

The rain will wash my shiver

Right off your memories...