In the sea of high grass you'll be sunk with your head,
In the house — with peace come along…
She'll embrace with her arms, veil around with her plait.
«Hi, my prince», she will say, slim and strong.
She will tell you again, «Here are charms of the rose,
Here the dodder was waving his curls.
What the news have you brought, in what lands have been lost?
Who dislikes us, who likes, who sends curse?»
As before you forget that the days go ahead,
As before you excuse loft and wrong,
And you see as the clouds at distance are spread,
And you hear the villages' song.
For the far lands your heart will bemoan its plea,
To the battle will call and entice,
She will say, «Farewell. And again come to me.»…
And again bells sing songs behind grass.
В густой траве пропадешь с головой.
В тихий дом войдешь, не стучась...
Обнимет рукой, оплетет косой
И, статная, скажет: "Здравствуй, князь.
Вот здесь у меня — куст белых роз.
Вот здесь вчера — повилика вилась.
Где был, пропадал? что за весть принес?
Кто любит, не любит, кто гонит нас?"
Как бывало, забудешь, что дни идут,
Как бывало, простишь, кто горд и зол.
И смотришь — тучи вдали встают,
И слушаешь песни далеких сел...
Заплачет сердце по чужой стороне,
Запросится в бой — зовет и манит...
Только скажет: "Прощай. Вернись ко мне" —
И опять за травой колокольчик звенит...
«Like water pooling from a pitcher, my mouth on your nipples! / Not always. The summer well runs dry. / Not for long the dust of our stamping feet, encore on encore / from the saxes on the casino's midnight bandstand. I’ve heard of age — its obese warbling! / When no wave will clap hands...»
«A lilac heat sickened the meadow; / high in the wood, a cathedral’s sharp, nicked groins. / No skeleton obstructed the bodies — / all was ours, obsequious wax in our fingers... Such, the dream: you do not sleep, / you only dream you thirst for sleep, / that someone elsewhere thirsts f...»
«Every Sunday they left a circus of dust behind them, / as they poured out on the turnpike in stately, overcrowded carriages, / and the showers found nobody at home, / and trampled through the bedroom windows. It was a custom at these staid Sunday dinners / to serve courses of rain instead o...»
«It seems I am choosing words that will stand, / and you are in them, / but if I blunder, it doesn’t matter — / I must persist in my errors. I hear the soiled, dripping small talk of the roofs; / the students’ black boots drum eclogues on the boardwalks, / the undefined city takes on...»