At my cheerless table
I a-musing sit:
How is one to be
In the world alone?
I, a stalwart youth,
Have no wife, no mate;
I, a stalwart youth,
Want a loving friend.
Want a harrow, share;
Want a kindly hearth;
Want a barn well-stocked,
And a good plough-horse.
One small heritage,
Joined with poverty,
My good father left, —
’Tis my lusty strength.
Even that how soon
Bitter need lays low,
Among strangers spent
In unfruitful toil.
At my cheerless table
I a-musing sit:
How is one to be
In the world alone?
Сяду я за стол —
Да подумаю:
Как на свете жить
Одинокому?
Нет у молодца
Молодой жены,
Нет у молодца
Друга вернова,
Золотой казны,
Угла тёплова,
Бороны-сохи,
Коня-пахаря;
Вместе с бедностью
Дал мне батюшка
Лишь один талан —
Силу крепкую;
Да и ту как раз
Нужда горькая
По чужим людям
Всю истратила.
Сяду я за стол —
Да подумаю:
Как на свете жить
Одинокому?
«Oh, the unconquerable heaviness / Of these waters silenced / Behind centuries-old dams! Oh Lord! It’s still the same, it’s hard for me / With my heart full to overflowing, / And a muse who’s un-talkative.»
«The greedy saline soil had eaten everything. / I rooted out the twisted, writhen roots of / The vines that curled here once upon a time – / The earth was nubbly, desiccated, scabby, / Like a feverish sick woman’s lips... / Beneath its lacerated sole my foot / Grew calloused from lean...»
«So Hagar sits in obloquy / And gushing piteously / The spring pours out a threnody: / Be-er la-chai ro-yi. Those lands belong to Abraham, / But this expanse – to none: / In front of her, the wilderness / To Shur itself does run. Despair, despair instinctual! / In her Egyptian eyes,...»
«Not for safe-keeping for awhile, – / For the altar, not donation, – / For the fire, the fire, its oblation / Rapt Israel brought in times gone by! And pleasing to Jehovah’s nostrils / Was smoke from sacrificial fires, / Because a consecrated offering / In truth, can not be taken b...»