Alexander Blok
Voice from Choir

How often we do cry — so we and I —
For the miserable, poor our life!
Oh, how you'd foreseen the future dark,
The coldness of days, friends mine!

Now you are pressing hands of dear girl,
And play with her, and joke her,
But cry, when you are marking once
The lie from lips, in hands — the sword.
Oh, baby, girl!

There's no measure to the lie, insidiousness,
And death — is far.
The blacker will be real world, nevetherless,
The frenzier will be the whirl of planets
For centuries and centuries!

The last of centuries, the cruelest of ones,
Will meet — as we, so I.
By sin will be then hided poor skies,
By frost — the lips'll be stunned.
The grief of no life...

And you will wait for spring, the spring —
But sping will you deceive.
You'll call for sun to shine — but it
Will not rise up to lit.
And cry, when you to cry begin
Will fall in vain within...

Be glad now with your life mere,
Quiter than water, quieter than grass!
Oh, if you could foresee, children,
The future cold, the future dark!

Translated by Lyudmila Purgina