Michael Scherbakov

         Islands
(Translated by Yuri Nesterenko)

My Son!
Those islands are all myth.
So relax and don't waste time -
Sailors lie, understand me,
It is silly to trust them.

Trust me:
No one of my true men
Ever met those islands.
I have asked everyone, son,
And I searched on my own, too.

All week
Seven ships went across seas;
Seven wonderful sea maps
I have had at my elbow;
Seven nights I have not slept.

In vain!
I have looked all the time, but
The horizon was all clean,
And the ocean was stark.
With no finds I've come back, son.

God wot,
Why the sailors tell that lie!
Well, apparently each flam
Can contain secret sense... But
Those stories are all bosh!

My son,
Those islands are just talks,
Ships are nonsense - we won't find
Any land that they can reach.
It's delirium, my son.

Wave chain
Makes the circle with no gaps.
Our continent is lone.
There are no happy islands!
No islands at all, son.

Days, weeks,
Months or years your way takes,
But at last you will get back,
Or to teeth of the whales, those,
On whose backs our world lies...

Come to ocean close not earlier than
You'll adopt admonition I gave. Wait before
you'll become calm and clever enough. Only then
Come to ocean shore without a danger
Of becoming a blind when you see Seven Islands,
Golden islands of Legend... As sailors
Use to say, there are Seven exactly,
Not less and not more...