In a mountain pass where the rocks for the winds are no checkers, where no one has ever set foot, so steep is the rise, there once lived a jubilant cheerful mountain echo, it answered the calls and responded to cries, human cries. When loneliness suddenly fills our heart with despair and when a low sound of pain down the cliff is about to land, adroitly, the echo will pick up the call and handling with care will then make it louder and with solicitude take it in hand. Some scoundrels, crazy and drunk, must have gotten around, in order that no one might hear the footfall and snort, intending to silence and murder the gorge, living canyon, they bound the echo and stopped up its mouth before it was shot. And so it went on, their bloody ferocious enraged merrymaking, no sound was heard as they trampled the echo, made fun of it, mocked... They shot in the morning the quietened mountain echo and tears gushed out like stones from the wounds of a rock...
© Alec Vagapov. Translation, 1998