When my daydreams cross the brink of long-lost days
To find you there again, within the mist of memory,
I weep sweet tears, like the first Hebrew who gazed
Upon the promised land beyond the boundary.
I don't regret the childish games or quiet dreams
Stirred up so painfully and sweetly by your presence
During those days when I discovered what first love means:
A chaotic rush of feelings, restless
Hours, the pressure of a hand, and shining eyes,
The murmur of our innocent, senseless patter
Accompanied now by giggles, now by tender sighs —
These seemed to us the echo of true passion.
Когда мои мечты за гранью прошлых дней
Найдут тебя опять за дымкою туманной,
Я плачу сладостно, как первый иудей
На рубеже земли обетованной.
Не жаль мне детских игр, не жаль мне тихих снов,
Тобой так сладостно и больно возмущённых
В те дни, как постигал я первую любовь
По бунту чувств неугомонных.
По сжатию руки, по отблеску очей,
Сопровождаемым то вздохами, то смехом,
По ропоту простых, незначащих речей,
Лишь нам звучащих страсти эхом.
«My unglorious day is waning, / Finally the end has come… / Oh, my ash-tree ice! My verses, / Light-transparent frigid ones! I do not intend to leave my / Useless goods to anyone. / I shine up the crystal and the / Silver for myself alone. And my icon lamp is burning, / Getting rosy...»
«And truly, one cannot predict / Who in the world will be one’s reader: / A ball can’t know what it will hit / Once it’s shot into the distance. Well, then, my life-creating verse, / Whom I breathe and in whom I live, / Fly off into darkness, into the void, / Or simply, into the se...»
«People cut a hole through / The dark-blue thickness of ice: / An air vent for big fish and little, / Water for water hoistings, / A way out for a weary woman / If in the end life turned out / Not to be traveling her road, / If she had nowhere to go!»
«Chase poems of the night away, / No need for preemies of the spirit: / Since night assists you at their birth, / And night is an atrocious midwife. You madman! If you really do / Aspire to exalted singing, / Outstubborn, try to overcome / Your momentary excitation. Know this: the chatt...»