O klasje moje

Oh my wheat

Oh, you, that lie beneath the bare hills, you my grain,

blood-sprinkled, my painfully-wrought bread.

Could not you be defended, could not you be saved

from hungry birds, my toilsome pain.

Soon there will be harvest.... wheat ripens under the knoll

my village shimmers in the sun,

but ominous cloud hovers over the forehead of mine

and thunder strikes the very deepest of my soul.

Tomorrow, when the sharp sickles are to shine,

and sheaf after sheaf as gold is to be lain,

my wound will bleed again,

and again, suffer peasant, and endure the pain of thine.

All of your slave-efforts put into each single stem

the mighty will feast all pompous and vain

and you, like a dog in the chain,

will be given a crumb... Oh, shame may lay upon them!

And no one will hear misery nor you to cry

nor the drunk party your pain will move,

peasant, miserable thing, dust on the floor, you can never improve,

pull and drag, and in a harness die!

Oh, my wheat beneath the wasteland of the hill after hill,

blood-sprinkled, my painfully-wrought bread.

Could not you be defended, could not you be saved

from hungry birds, my dearest toil.

(Translated by Sonja Stikic)