# Poplar

By [georgebaker7291026](https://paragraph.com/@georgebaker7291026) · 2024-05-28

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The wind is howling through the oak tree,

Walking across the field,

The edge of the road bends the poplar

All the way to the bottom.

The stature is high, the leaf is wide

It is green in vain.

Around the field, like the sea

Wide and blue.

The Chumak comes and looks

And bows his head,

A shepherd in the morning with a flute

Sits on the grave,

He will look and his heart will ache:

There are no epics around.

Alone, alone, like an orphan

In a foreign land, dying!

Who cherished a thin, flexible woman

To die in the steppe?

Wait, I'll tell you everything.

Listen, girls!

I fell in love with a marigold

A Cossack girl.

She fell in love and never stopped him:

He went away and died...

If she had known that he would leave her

She would not have loved him;

If she had known that he would die

I would not have let him go;

If she had known, she wouldn't have gone

Too late for water,

I wouldn't have stayed till midnight

With my darling under the willow tree...

A year has passed, another year has passed.

The Cossack is gone;

She dries like a flower;

The mother does not ask:

“Why are you withering, my daughter?”

The old woman did not ask,

For the gray-haired, rich man

She quietly united them.

“Go, my daughter,” says the mother.

“It's not your age to be a maiden!

He is rich, he is lonely.

You will be a ruler.”

“I don't want to be a ruler,

I will not go, mother!

With the towels you bought,

Let me down into the pit

Let the priests sing,

And let the cousins cry

Easy, mom, they're in a coffin,

Than to see him...”

And so that marigold

Cried and sang...

And suddenly, in the middle of the field

She became a poplar.

The wind is howling in the oak tree,

Walking across the field,

The poplar bends the edge of the road

All the way to the bottom...

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*Originally published on [georgebaker7291026](https://paragraph.com/@georgebaker7291026/poplar)*