And it seemed to me those fires
Were about me till dawn.
And I never learnt —
The colour of those eyes.
Everything was trembling, singing;
Were you my friend or enemy,
And winter was it, or summer?
...И мне показалось, что это огни
Со мною летят до рассвета,
И я не дозналась — какого они,
Глаза эти странные, цвета.
И все трепетало и пело вокруг,
И я не узнала — ты враг или друг,
Зима это или лето.
«Everything rests on your small shoulders: / the sidelong glances of conscience, / our dangerous, wolfish simplicity — / my words, like a drowned woman, are dumb. Red fins shining, red gills fanning, / their wondering mouths rounded in wordless / and famished O’s, the fish fin here and...»
«We live. We are not sure our land is under us. / Ten feet away, no one hears us. But wherever there’s even a half-conversation, / we remember the Kremlin’s mountaineer. His thick fingers are fat as worms, / his words reliable as ten-pound weights. His boot tops shine, / his cockroach ...»
«Is it possible to praise a dead woman? / She was an alien to her people and full of strength. / The power of her love for a stranger / brought her to a hot and violent grave. The firm black swallows of her eyebrows / swoop down at me from the grave. / They tell me they’ve lain too long ...»
«My body, all I borrowed from the earth, / I do not want it to return here — / some flour-white butterfly. / My body, scratched and chewed with thought, / I want it to become a street, a land — / it was too full of vertebrae. The dark green pine needles howling in the wind / look lik...»