EPTOriginal text, for those who can read Russian
The song used for an Evangelion AMV:
Translation of "Ballad of Battle" by Vladimir Vysotsky
Among half-molten candles and prayers at night,
Among campfires of peacetime and trophies of war
Lived the book-children, they who knew not of the fight,
From their petty catastrophes whiny and sore.
With their size and their lives kids are never content,
And we'd scrap unto scratches, to hatred offend.
But our clothing was mended by mothers. Unfazed,
We had swallowed the stories, grew drunk with each phrase.
Hair would cling to each head like a sweat-bonded shell,
And our stomachs contentedly growled with events
And our heads always dizzied with battle-born smell
Which from yellowing pages would waft and condense.
And so we, peacetime brats, tried to grasp with a scowl,
We, who couldn't tell a war-cry apart from a howl,
What the word "order" meant, what the borders were for,
How one led an attack, and the clanging of war.
From the cauldrons of battles, from war's broken drum,
So much nourishment came to each hungry young mind!
To the roles of the coward, the Judas, the scum
In our children's games we had our rivals assigned.
And the villain's fresh footprints to cool we wouldn't let,
And we swore we would love all the beauties we met,
And our close ones we cherished, friends' fears we'd allay,
And the roles of the heroes we'd take every day.
Into stories of greatness we children had fled;
That diversion grows short - too much pain all around.
Try to open the palms of the recently dead,
And do not let their weapons catch rust on the ground.
Try to test, with a still-cooling sword in your hand
And in full armor clad, where you stand, where you stand!
Are you fate's chosen hero or utter poltroon?
Try the taste of true battle, and learn of it soon.
When your comrade is killed by an enemy's blade,
And when over his body you cry out in pain,
And when you are by grief and by impotence flayed
Because it had been he and not you who was slain,
You have grasped, you have learned, told apart, sadly found,
From the grin you can tell - death grins back from the ground.
Lies and evil - behold, faces crude and morose,
And behind line your path only crosses and crows.
If you never ate meat from the tip of a knife,
If you watched from above, never risking your life,
And if fear of the hangman has held you in thrall,
Your existence was wasted for nothing at all.
If while hacking your path, father's sword in your hand,
You fought on through your tears and in victory smiled,
If in battle-born heat you have found where you stand,
You have read the right stories when you were a child.
