We are dwarf birches. <br />We sit firmly, like splinters, <br />under the nails of frosts <br /> <br />and the Khanate of Eternal Freeze <br />engages in many shenanigans <br />to bend us down lower and lower. <br />Are you astonished, Parisian chestnuts? <br /> <br />Are you pained, haughty palms, <br />that we seem to have fallen low? <br />Are you embittered, pacesetters of fashion, <br />that we are all such Quasimodos? <br /> <br />While safe and warm, though, <br />you are pleased with our courage, <br />and you send us, pompous and mournful, <br />your moral support. <br /> <br />You figure, dear colleagues of ours, <br />that we are not trees but cripples. <br />Yet our leaves-though ugly- <br />seem progressive to you, for the frost. <br /> <br />Thanks a million. Alone, if you please, <br />we shall weather it under the sky, <br />even if savagely bent and twisted. <br />Without your moral support. <br /> <br />Of course, you command more freedom. <br />But, for all that, our roots are more strong. <br />Of course, we don’t dwell in Paris, <br />but we are valued more in the tundra. <br /> <br />We are dwarf birches. <br />We have cleverly made up our poses. <br />But all this is largely pretense. <br />Constraint bears the form of rebellion. <br /> <br />We believe, bent down forever, <br />eternal frost can’t last. <br />Its horror will yield. <br />Our right to stand upright will come. <br /> <br />Should the climate change, won’t <br />our branches at once grow <br />into shapes that are free? <br />Yet we’re now used to being maimed. <br /> <br />And this worries and worries us, <br />and the frost twists and twists us, <br />but we dig in, like splinters, <br />we-dwarf birches! <br /> <br /> <br />1966 <br />Translated by Vera Dunham<br /><br />Yevgeny Yevtushenko<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dwarf-birches/
