Why, revelry's voice, are you still?
Ring out, songs of Bacchus, our patron!
Long life to you, maiden and matron,
Ye fair ones who gave of your love with a will!
Drink, friend, drink with gusto and relish!
As I do in mine,
In your glass of wine
Fling lightly the ring that you cherish!
Come, let's clink our glasses and high let us raise them!
Hail, muses! Hail, reason! In song let us praise them!
Thou, bright sun of genius, shine on!
Like this ancient lamp that grows dimmer
And fades with the coming of dawn,
So false wisdom pales at the first flash and glimmer
Of true wisdom's ne'er-fading light...
Live, radiant day! Perish, darkness and night!
Что смолкнул веселия глас?
Раздайтесь, вакхальны припевы!
Да здравствуют нежные девы
И юные жены, любившие нас!
Полнее стакан наливайте!
На звонкое дно
В густое вино
Заветные кольца бросайте!
Подымем стаканы, содвинем их разом!
Да здравствуют музы, да здравствует разум!
Ты, солнце святое, гори!
Как эта лампада бледнеет
Пред ясным восходом зари,
Так ложная мудрость мерцает и тлеет
Пред солнцем бессмертным ума.
Да здравствует солнце, да скроется тьма!
«Don’t seduce me into captivity, / Don’t entice me with hearth and home, / Don’t immure me living and breathing / Inside four walls. There’s no chamber for which a poet / Would exchange her homelessness, – / That’s why the cuckoo cuckoos / That she hasn’t got a nest.»
«Voice Enormous city. Wind. Evening. / Lights flicker in the dark, / And you, madman, are off in search of / A soul mate in each passerby. / Calm down, stop acting crazy, poet, / Resign yourself to orphan-hood / And do not pester with your cries / The people there who pass you by. Poe...»
«Kneeling on the hard window sill / And thrust out the window – a gaping fish mouth! / A breath…a breath of air…Like a living corpse / Who sucks life from a gray oxygen bag, / And whose heart thumps: time to go! time to go! / And sky’s heavy arch weighs on the earth, / And the whi...»
«As a shade with three dimensions, brother, / It isn’t easy to drag out one’s fate! / Moscow’s madhouse now is overcrowded, / And the cemetery also has no space / For your dust in roomy crypts or coffins, – / Now you’re buried in a metal saucepan. Seems the world’s no longer s...»