Alexander Blok
All that is finished, finished, finished...

All that is finished, finished, finished;
The circle of our days is done.
And what illusion, and what power,
Recalls you, Past, when you have gone?

Some morning clean and clear as crystal,
By Moscow’s Kremlin shall I be,
When my own land recalls my spirit
To its primordial ecstasy?

Or Easter-night beside the Neva,
In wind and ice and snowstorm, shall
Some beggar-woman with her crutches
Move my still body where I fall?

Or in the countryside I love so,
When the grey autumn rustles round,
In rain and mist shall the young vultures
Devour my body on the ground?

Or in an hour of starless anguish,
Inside some room’s four walls, shall I
Give in to iron fate’s compulsion
And lie down on white sheets to die?

Or in new life, beyond all semblance.
Shall I forget my former dreams,
And shall my memory of these Doges
Be all that now Kalita seems?

But I belive — not past pursuing
Goes all I loved with such desire,
All of our beggared life’s poor trembling,
Our unintelligible fire!

Translated by Cecil Maurice Bowra