How can I live with this burden —
And yet she’s called The Muse.
“She’s with you in a meadow … ,” they say.
They say, “Divine muttering!”
She’ll seize you worse than a fever
And then, for an entire year, nothing at all.
Как и жить мне с этой обузой,
А ещё называют Музой,
Говорят: «Ты с ней на лугу…»
Говорят: «Божественный лепет…»
Жёстче, чем лихорадка, оттреплет,
И опять весь год ни гу-гу.
«How did they kill my grandmother? / This is how they killed my grandmother: / In the morning a tank / Rolled up to the city bank. One hundred and fifty Jews of the town. / Weightless / from a whole year's starvation. / Pale, / with the pangs of death upon them. / Came there, carryin...»
«Burdened with family feelings, I went / To my aunt's place, / to see my uncle, To press my girl cousins to my breast, / Who were so carried away, / as it happened, / By music a...»
«On the pavement / of my trampled soul / the soles of madmen / stamp the prints of rude, crude words. / Where cities / hang / and in the noose of clouds / the towers’ / crooked spires / congeal — / I go / and solitary weep / that cross-roads / crucify / policemen.»
«It seems, I shall never grow accustomed / to sitting in the “Bristol,” / drinking tea, / lying by the line — / I shall upset the glasses, / clamber on the table / “Listen / literary brothers! / You sit, / eyes drowning in tea, / your velvet elbows worn with scribbling. / ...»