Organ grinder

The old barrel organ was spinning, the wheel of life was rolling.
I drank wine for your grace and for the past for everything.
For the fact that in the past it did not happen on the battlefield to die,
And what has broken - has broken, why should it ring like fragments?

The organ-grinder was in a shabby coat, he was somewhere in the music.
He did not attach any importance to my palms, stretched out towards you.
I loved you, but I swore by the past, and he hugged the barrel organ,
My words, earthly and vulgar, listened with distracted anguish.

That song flowed like a road, in no hurry of recent years.
All sounds were from God - not a pathetic note from herself.
But wretched words fell, ruining living music:
There was only one thing from God, everything else was from oneself.

(Bulat Okudzhava, 1979)