Karel Kryl -- Morituri Te Salutant (Those Who Are About To Die Salute You) -- English Lyrics

I heard this song (the Latin title meaning -- "Those Who Are About To Die Salute You") when I was about 5 years old; my father played it at home quite often, wherever home was in those years as he planned for us to escape after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and settle where communism couldn't reach us.
It is a difficult song to translate, because it is really a sophisticated poem, replete with the symbolism of the time, which I, as a 5 year-old back then, couldn't fathom until I grew older, in a land that knew nothing of invasions.
It's a song of a hostile and unwanted conscription to army life, with a fear of fighting against brother nations, and against brothers, who could also be the Sargents in command.
And, of course, there was the fear of dying for a cause that no conscripted soldier of the time in Czechoslovakia wanted to agree with. They had wives and girlfriends; so much to live for.
And in the song there is the fear of the threat of nuclear annihilation, a fear that was foremost in everyone's minds in those Cold War years, whether you were in the army or not, or in Czechoslovakia or elsewhere.
My translation can be improved, of course, but it was motivated by there being no really acceptable one that I could find on the Internet; and so I made my own.
As I am a Slovak, who grew up neither in Czechia nor in Slovakia, I'll be happy for any corrections, in the comments below!
But 50 years on, and in memory of my Slovak father, I feel a sense of duty and satisfaction to present what I heard in Czech brother Kryl's most beautiful and poignant song of the time, 50 years after the terrible facts. Here is the English translation:
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TITLE: Those Who Are About To Die Salute You -- Karel Kryl
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"The road is dust,
and rock,
and choked and smothered clay,
And grey streaks of it
Will paint into your hair.
And paths of stars
Are jewels
That spin around like stones,
With feathers thick
From those of Pegasus.
The road’s a whip,
She’s bad,
Like a woman from the streets;
In ‘er hand’s a shield,
But cheap foil's on her waste,
Her eyes cry want,
When she throws to the unknown
Two fragile twigs
Of red gladiols.
Sargent the sand
Is white,
As are the arms of Daniel.
Wait just a while!
My eyes
did see it here,
So long ago,
the seconds of oblivion.
Sargent wave your hand
And I shall be blessed…
Those who are about to die salute you;
Those who are about to die salute you.
Down that road
I went,
Where on the ground’s all adrift,
And the sand whirls
The wings of all the doves;
And Mars played me
Gun sounds
That tried hard for calm,
But brought only
Illusions that destroy.
The road is tar
And dust
and choked and smothered clay;
Bullets of brass;
Come forth
From a were'wolf;
A rusty gun - my kin,
And hundred-year-old dirt;
An unrelenting thick, thick
White cloud.
Sargent the sand
Is white,
As are the arms of Daniel.
Wait just a while!
My eyes
did see it here,
So long ago,
the seconds of oblivion.
Sargent wave your hand
And I shall be blessed…
Those who are about to die salute you;
Those who are about to die salute you."
Copyrighted translation 2020 - Sedrick Sultan and identity.

[@vit578]

Thanks 👍 Interesting to see from post Soviet perspective