Along that road where brave Donskoi
once led his mighty host to war,
where the wind's mindful of the foe,
the moon's a crescent of yellow,
I walked as if in ocean deep...
The sweet briar so perfumed the air
as if 't were speech itself so rare;
and I was apt at last to meet
the ninth and fatal wave of fate.
По той дороге, где Донской
Вел рать великую когда-то,
Где ветер помнит супостата,
Где месяц желтый и рогатый, —
Я шла, как в глубине морской...
Шиповник так благоухал,
Что даже превратился в слово,
И встретить я была готова
Моей судьбы девятый вал.
«Winter nears. Once more / the bear’s secret retreat / will vanish under mud’s floor, / to a child’s fretful grief. Huts will wake in the water, / reflecting paths of smoke, / circled by autumn’s tremor / lovers meet by the fire to talk. Denizens of the harsh North / whose roo...»
«Like a brazier’s bronze cinders, / the sleepy garden’s beetles flowing. / Level with me, and my candle, / a flowering world is hanging. As if into unprecedented faith, / I cross into this night, / where the poplar’s beaten grey / veils the moon’s rim from sight. Where the pond...»
«Like with a bronze ash of the braziers / Spills with the beetles sleepy park. / With me and candle mine at grade with / Are hanging blossomed worlds in fact. And like in an unprecedented / Faith am I passing at this night, / Where poplar that’s dilapidated / Has veiled a lunar path al...»
«Ice-chips plucked whole from the smoke, / the past week’s stars all frozen in flight, / Head over heels the skater’s club goes, / clinking its rink with the peal of night. Step slow, slower, slow-er, skater, / pride carving its trace as you race by. / each turn’s a constellation cut...»