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.
«Mist climbs from the lake. / Fields bare after harvest. / Beyond blue hills / the sun rolls to its rest. Splintered, deep in ruts, / the weary road thinks / it cannot be long now / till grey-haired winter. In the misty, resonant grove / I watched yesterday / as a bay moon, like a f...»
«The sower walks down the even furrows; / his fathers all furrowed the path he follows. The young seed glitters gold in his hand, / but it must fall into the black ground. There, amid the tunnels of the blind worm, / it will die on its due day – and grow again. So now my soul treads the pa...»
«At the peep o day in the lift forgether / bonnie cloods like a steepled toun, / wi mony a dome like a bubble o gowd / and white roofs and white waas blinterin doun. O yon is my ain white city — / or I came to the earth I bade there! / abune the derk warld quhile it sleeps / in the rei...»
«Poor poet, was that really you, / addressing the moon in rhyme? / My eyes were dulled so long ago / by love, by cards and wine. The moon climbs through the window frame. / White light, so white it blinds you... / I bet on the Queen of Spades, / but I played the Ace of Diamonds.»