2021.01.27.
Gumshoes (full version)
Day and night from the Carpathians to Kuril Islands1The winds blow, calling and beckoning,
I've bought myself good gumshoes,2
Please, take this and don't hold me.
Chorus:
I want to go throughout the land in gym shoes
To sight personally what is lying long way out,
(Please, write me letters in petty handwriting,
Insofar as there’s not much room in the backpack.) x2
In taiga I love a taiga trail,
And in desert I love a vast amount of ginger sand,
Wherein the uncomplaining camel got used to carry
Two humps as two huge backpacks.
Chorus.
In gumshoes you can walk along with the song:
On the asphalt, on the grass, amidst the swamps,
In gumshoes you can even fly in the sky -
If you also add a helicopter to them.
Chorus.
If the rain springs up with the breeze,
Before you get a cold, be warned:
To a drugstore for a sinapism3
You'll have to go 400 miles on foot.4
Chorus.
Watch at the trail attentively,
I've imprinted by soles wherever I could
The clear number 'forty three' -5
And the factory brand, as a tracery!
- 1. Карпаты - the mountains in western Ukraine, 'Курилы' (Курильские острова) - the islands in eastern Russia, near the Japanese border
- 2. 'кеды' - type of sports shoes, popular in '60-80s, obsolete in '90s,
predecessor of sneakers - 3. 'горчичник' - a sheet of paper with mustard, applied in medicine in event of cold
- 4. 'верста' - 1.06 km length
- 5. '43' - figure, meaning shoe size