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.
«By gates of an abode, blessed, / A man stood, asking for donation, / A beggar, cruelly oppressed / By hunger, thirst and deprivation. He asked just for a peace of bread, / And all his looks were full of anguish, / And was a cold stone laid / Into his stretched arm, thin and languished. ...»
«My lonely heart athirst, I trod / A barren waste when, so 'twas fated, / A winged seraph 'fore me stood: / Where crossed the desert roads he waited. / Upon my orbs of sightless clay / His fingers lightly he did lay. / And like a startled eagle round me / I gazed and saw the earth surro...»
«I like it that you're burning not for me, / I like it that it's not for you I'm burning / And that the heavy sphere of Planet Earth / Will underneath our feet no more be turning / I like it that I can be unabashed / And humorous and not to play with words / And not to redden with a smoth...»
«These my poems, written so early / That I did not know then I was a poet, / Which having tore, like droplets from a fountain, / Like sparks from a rocket, Into a sanctuary, where there is sleep and incense / Like little devils having burst, / These my poems about youth and about death, / ...»