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.
«The bells again break the silence, / Wailing with remorse… / Only several streets divide us, / Only several words! A silver sickle lights the night, / The city sleeps this hour, / The falling snowflakes set alight / The stars upon your collar. Are the sores of the past still aching? ...»
«For Max Voloshin They’ll pay a visit to our place / Just when our eyes are free of pain, / Let pain appear, — they won’t remain: / The hearts of cats feel no disgrace! It’s funny, poet, wouldn’t you say, / How hard we try to make them tame. / They will not play the roles of sla...»
«My poems, written early, when I doubted / that I could ever play the poet’s part, / erupting, as though water from the fountain / or sparks from a petard, / and rushing as though little demons, senseless, / into the sanctuary, where incense spreads, / my poems about death and adolescen...»
«You, walking past me and racing / After charms that you’ll hardly attain, — / If you knew how much fire is wasted, / How much life is wasted in vain! And what flames, so courageously rash, / An occasional shade can evoke, / And how my heart was burnt into ash / By this useless gunpo...»