White churches stand tall and there’s resonant, glistening ice,
And the cornflower-blue is abloom in my son’s precious gaze.
Nights strung with diamonds hang high on the ancient town’s heights,
More yellow than linden-flower honey the sickle-moon’s rays.
Dry blizzards blow in from the fields past the faraway river,
And people, like angels, rejoice in the Lord’s Holy Day.
They’ve tidied the parlor, lit icon lamps, flames all aquiver;
They’ve placed the Good Book on a table of oak, and they pray.
There dour-faced memory, forthrightness now apt to abhor,
Did open her sanctum sanctorum and bowed low to me;
But I ventured not in, and I slammed shut the hideous door,
While the town was suffused with the bells of Nativity’s glee.
Там белые церкви и звонкий, светящийся лёд,
Там милого сына цветут васильковые очи.
Над городом древним алмазные русские ночи
И серп поднебесный желтее чем липовый мёд.
Там вьюги сухие взлетают с заречных полей,
И люди, как ангелы, Божьему празднику рады,
Прибрали светлицу, зажгли у киота лампады,
И Книга Благая лежит на дубовом столе.
Там строгая память, такая скупая теперь,
Свои терема мне открыла с глубоким поклоном;
Но я не вошла, я захлопнула страшную дверь;
И город был полон весёлым рождественским звоном.
«Under my window / Tucked in the snow / White birch retired / Clad in silver glow. On the fluffy branches / Snowy-trim with silver-tinge / Melted around catkins / Forming white fringe. Like golden fires / Snow-flakes blazed / While birch stood still / Asleep, or amazed. Meanwhile...»
«Leaves atremble, / the maples rocked. / They scattered pollen / like powdered brass. / Winds blew and / green forest sighted. / The echo whispered / with dried / feather – grass, Gloomy storm / at the window cries / bending twigs / toward the murky glass. / Shaking morosel...»
«In the evening realm / of the green spring, / A calm river winds / like a silvery string. / The forested hills / hug the red sun. / The golden horn / gives birth / to the moon; / In a tiny hut, / the ploughman / is back from the / furrowed hills. / The nightingale / trill...»
«The blizzard buried the hedge, / Behind the window the snow still falls / While on the warm stove ledge / An old man his youth recalls. "Eh, there were good seasons / In my life — nothing went wrong, / I had no worries, but the reasons / To carouse and sing the songs, And now what li...»