And cursing each other with brute
Passion, white-hot all through,
Neither one of us understood
How small the earth was for two,
That memory torments with spite,
Afflicting the most strong-hearted,
That one learns to plead in the night:
Where has my friend departed?
And as the choir voices rise,
Happy and menacing, that instant,
The same two stern and certain eyes
Survey the soul, persistent.
И когда друг друга проклинали
В страсти, раскалённой добела,
Оба мы ещё не понимали,
Как земля для двух людей мала,
И что память яростная мучит,
Пытка сильных — огненный недуг! —
И в ночи́ бездонной сердце учит
Спрашивать: о, где ушедший друг?
А когда, сквозь волны фимиама,
Хор гремит, ликуя и грозя,
Смотрят в душу строго и упрямо
Те же неизбежные глаза.
«These my poems, written so early / That I did not know then I was a poet, / Which having tore, like droplets from a fountain, / Like sparks from a rocket, Into a sanctuary, where there is sleep and incense / Like little devils having burst, / These my poems about youth and about death, / ...»
«They cut / Ashberry / Keen. / Ashberry — / Is bitter / Fortune. / Ashberry — / With gray-haired / Descents. / Ashbery! / Fortune / Russian.»
«Dirt flies / From under the hooves. / Shawl like a shield / Over the face. / Newlyweds, have fun / Without the young! / Eh, carry them out, / Disheveled stallion! We didn't have freedom / Under mother and dad, / The whole field for us / Is marital bed! Full without bread and wi...»
«The gypsy passion of parting! / You meet it — and you take flight! / I dropped the arms and the forehead / And think staring into the night: No one, digging in our letters, / Understood in all depth / How we're sacrilegious — that is / How we in each other have faith...»