The Crow

Here's a tentative translation of one of my Okudzhava favourites.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jprcdmoPY0U

If you see a flying crow,
war is coming into town.
If you let him get away,
if you let him get away,
war will greet the break of day.

If we shoot the crow, no war
we shall have to fight at all.
We shall need to load the guns,
we shall need to load the guns
so we can shoot the crow at once.

We begin to load the guns,
shooting starts to feel like fun.
Once the bullets fill the air,
once the bullets fill the air
they will find a hole somewhere.

They don't mind to fly at all,
they will take them short and tall.
They will take your friends and foes,
they will find them far and close,
that's where everybody goes.

Pow! - and we have nothing left,
pow! - and we have no one left.
Pow! - and we have no one left,
just the crow atop that shed,
no one's left to shoot him dead...

It's a bit like "Where have all the flowers gone?", but it's only a translation, not original lyrics. Or more like an attempt at a translation. This is one of his simplest songs, so the translation is actually almost decent.

The original author is my all-time favourite singer-songwriter and the only artist whose entire production I treasure - the Russian-Georgian Bulat Okudzhava. There's quite a few of his words in many of my songs, and the idea of the final verse of "I Carry On" is derived from one of his superb Mozart songs. Except he says it with ten times the depth, the beauty and the skill.

It's a pretty straightforward translation, so at least you can see what he sings about. Unlike most Okudzhava songs, this song doesn't have multiple layers of meaning or lots of symbols, it's a very straightforward anti-war song.

Regina Spektor has recently recorded a few Okudzhava songs but I don't know if she's done any in English, not that I've found at least. She has a funny accent when she speaks/sings Russian :-)

Okudzhava's "Prayer" is one of his best, though I can't say I like Spektor's intepretation a lot. I should probably try to translate it into English. This is Spektor's version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf4yVGa7zqY

Edit: I actually found a half-decent translation of "Prayer". BTW Okudzhava was pretty much an atheist.