My husband beat me with the plating
Of a belt he bent in two.
With a candle, I keep waiting
On the windowsill for you.
It is dawning. Smoke is weaving,
Rising up above the forge.
O, for me, a captive grieving,
You, again, did not emerge.
It’s for you such fate I bear,
Filled with torment and ordeal,
Did you fall for someone fair?
Does a redhead now appeal?
How to mask such ringing moaning!
Heart is stifled, drunk with dread,
As the thin rays of the morning
Graze the still unrumpled bed.
Муж хлестал меня узорчатым,
Вдвое сложенным ремнём.
Для тебя в окошке створчатом
Я всю ночь сижу с огнём.
Рассветает. И над кузницей
Подымается дымок.
Ах, со мной, печальной узницей,
Ты опять побыть не мог.
Для тебя я долю хмурую,
Долю-муку приняла.
Или любишь белокурую,
Или рыжая мила?
Как мне скрыть вас, стоны звонкие!
В сердце темный, душный хмель,
А лучи ложатся тонкие
На несмятую постель.
«She stands there with a sly expression, smiling. / Holding a huge scroll in her marble hands. / She notes life, death, and fame in her compiling, / Records all time, all people in all lands. And she (who’s not to blame) gets bored and weary / With fates of slaves, chiefs, races, patriarch...»
«Wedding wreaths crown the mountains. / I’m ecstatic... I’m young. / And all over my mountains / Such a pure chill is hung. And behold — to my rock / Came a gray-haired hunchback, shuffling-stumbling. / And the gift that he brought / Was pineapples from an underground dungeon. O h...»
«Once there lived both he and I; / To be friends we had to die. Skeleton, he'd visit me... / Winters, summers... frequently. Simple heart and solid bone; / We strolled this graveyard alone. And with laughter he’d recall / That gay day: our funeral. How they bore box behind box... / Ho...»
«He believed in a golden radiance, / And he died from the arrows of the sun. / He measured centuries with his thinking, / But could not live his life — this one. Don’t laugh at the dead poet: / But come, bring him a wreath. / On the cross — winter, summer / There bangs my porcelai...»