Wide and yellow the evening light.
I feel a gentle April chill.
Your coming's late by many a year
but to me you're welcome still.
Look at me with those merry eyes;
sit down next to me this minute:
here's that blue-bound notebook
with my girlish verses in it.
Forgive me for living like a hermit,
for not delighting in the sun.
Forgive my taking so many others
when — you know — you were the one.
Широк и жёлт вечерний свет,
Нежна апрельская прохлада.
Ты опоздал на много лет,
Но все-таки тебе я рада.
Сюда ко мне поближе сядь,
Гляди весёлыми глазами:
Вот эта синяя тетрадь —
С моими детскими стихами.
Прости, что я жила скорбя
И солнцу радовалась мало.
Прости, прости, что за тебя
Я слишком многих принимала.
«Here’s the rain crashing down, / time has stopped. / The clocks go on helplessly knocking. / Grow, grass, you don’t need time. / Speak, Holy Spirit, you don’t need words.»
«Impossible almost, for you were always here: / In the shade of blessed limes, / in hospitals and bockades, / In the prison-cell, and where there were evil birds, / Lush grasses, and terrifying water. / How everything ha...»
«Surely the young king must have been blind to pity / As he spoke the order: "Destroy Thebes utterly." / The old general gazed, and knew this place to be / No better than he remembered it, a haughty city. Put it all to the fire! There were wonders — gate / And tower and temple – everywhe...»
«Nowhere anything for eating, / all of Russia fading, freezing, / selling gramophones and blankets, / hats and chairs and anything / in exchange for wheat and millet / in the year nineteen-nineteen. Elder brother killed already, / and my dad already blind, / all our furniture long bart...»