Why am I too amicable with others
Feeling that of all he is the farthest?
Why can’t I though shunning him elsewhere
Still not run him into, here and there?
Why on seeing him do I get angry,
At all exasperated, all and sundry?
Why when I am left with him in private
Do I scoff at him offended by it?
Afterwards the night through I'll be crying.
Who can tell the answer, who is prying?
Отчего со всеми я любезна,
Только с ним нас разделяет бездна?
Отчего с ним, хоть его бегу я,
Не встречаться всюду не могу я?
Отчего, когда его увижу,
Словно весь я свет возненавижу?
Отчего, как с ним должна остаться,
Так и рвусь над ним же издеваться?
Отчего — кто разрешит задачу? —
До зари потом всю ночь проплачу?
«Oh, how I loved you, land that bore me, / My Russia, freedom’s motherland, / When under whip you languished sorely, / Stayed silent did your people grand. Your faith was wild and quite unseeing, / For resurrection long your wait! / And now that prison’s gates are freeing, / I see yo...»
«No more Europe, no more America. / The end of Tsarskoye, of Moscow, too. / A fit of nuclear hysteria – / life atomized into a radiant blue. Transparent, all-forgiving haze will stretch / over the seas. And he who could have done / something yet chose not to, will be left / in the expa...»
«You took me – / I was sullen, without affection, / with only black thoughts / and convict ravings / and a widow’s unhealed anguish / and a past love that wasn’t past / You took me as a wife – / not for joy’s sake, / not of your own accord / but out of love.»
«Moscow, who are you? / Enchantress or enchanted? / Forger of freedom / or fettered lady? / What thought furrows your brow / as you plot your worldwide plot? / Are you a shining window / into another age? / O Moscow, are you femme fatale / or fetter-fated, / fated or fêted? / D...»