Music by Vladimir Ragimov
          Lyrics by Rasul Gamzatov

Once a bard of ancient glory
Wrote and handed down a song,
Saying horsemen are like aurochs,
Just as proud and wild and strong.

Ever since that day our hunters,
Skilful mountaineers each one,
Every time they are confronted
By an auroch, drop their gun.

Another bard, my predecessor,
Once compared his lady love
To a bird with rainbow feathers,
Circling high in heaven above.

Thus he sang with zeal untiring
In his loving lady's praise.
All who heard the song no firearm
At a rainbow-bird dared raise.

Why has sacred mountain custom
Fallen in disuse of late?
Why are words by poets spoken
Powerless to alter fate?

Now to what should man be likened
So that evil pass him by,
So that death itself be spited
And the innocent not die?

On the skyline clouds are lowering,
But it seems a poet's call
Shall save neither bird nor aurochs,
Not one soul among us all.

1979, Moscow