Бажанов, А. Стихи и поэмы о саамском крае = Verses & poems on the Saami land / Аскольд Бажанов ; English translation by Naomi Caffee ; with an essay by Johanna Domokos. - Berlin : Nordeuropa-Institut der Humboldt-Universitat, 2009. - 205 с. : ил., портр.

1 5 3 Boys Where are they now, those former boys, friends, rakish river workers? Childhood spoiled us too much, w ith the river’s transparent clarity. Out on the boat we did not know sorrow, much less in the early spring, the pike could not escape our trolling, nor our shining copper hooks. Having docked to the shore at midnight, having grilled the fish on the campfire, w e greeted every new day, propping the sun up with our shoulders, then the sun, tiered all day long, touched the hill above the river, in order to feel, at least for a moment, the peacefulness of the earth. We did not sleep during the White Nights, we sat gazing at spring. Our fairytale childhood fell from us, as worries flooded the soul. The beginning of an orphan’s fate, with an excess of grown-up worries, will be buried by the old wharves that creak in the northern wind. I was so happy and moved at the spring and the sunrise, that I tasted a piece of poetry, rather than a piece of grilled fish! Not in the least because every year, as the rivers rang through in spring, the Tuloma river with its cold water calls me in the dream of childhood. There, behind the mountains, all, as in the past, the forest, the Kentish, and the ravine. But there are no more boys, whose hope hid doggedly in the mountains.