A Magic Meeting that Changed the Course of History

                "Just ran off the Path, that’s all, a little mud on my shoes”
                "A Sound of Thunder", Ray Bradbury

Great Britain breaks the open waters,
While Russia marches o’er the land.
A butterfly is stepped on, flattened -
And magic rules with iron hand...

...One night – a meeting on a boulevard
Under the bleak light of street lamps
Two men: one – modest, capped and coated,
Another was all couture class.

The first man, as if reading music
From page, he spoke with a slight burr
But soft and confident and fluent
His speech would an emotion spur.

The other, too, impressed by using
Essentially a learned tongue.
But, as a hunt with no greyhounds
Or as a snake with skin hamstrung,

His speech was just an imitation -
Without style, or high converse.
One might write poetry in this fashion –
Then poems could have been no worse!

...A passionate but bluntly spoken
His story: platitude and guile.
The coated man, a little paling,
Said: “Come, my friend, and wait,

There is no need to drive at anger!
You have a President’s career.”
“Not really, Vladimir”, the other
Responded, “I’m a gondolier

Who rows my boat along the river
Of your ideals and mad goals.
Where downstream becomes more foul,
Yet I am smarter than them all!”


“You Guard, without doubt, Business
Of my utopias and qualms.”
The capped one spent the night in crying
And left the country. Au revoir!

Thus, history was left forever
Without a chapter grim and bleak.
He got engaged to an English woman,
A widow rented them a home.

He shaved his beard off, toiled, and children
Gave him his joy and merriment.
The other one had joined the Army,
And uniformed his years were spent.

Yet history remembers nothing
Of them – they are but specs of dust.

The seas are gone: just muddy waters
Banked with persistent yellow crust.

      ...VONAILU gave us this account –
         He was a hero; wars of Mars.


Перевод на английский Михаила Вороненко (опубликовано с его разрешения)-  стихотворение "Фантастическая встреча, изменившая ход истории...".
http://www.stihi.ru/2008/11/07/913