Not the snake fangs, but the stinging
Heartache emptied out my veins.
A quiet girl, I call love, singing
Birdlike in the whitened plains.
The other road closed long ago,
My prince — in a fortress, up high,
Will I betray him? — I don’t know!
But my life on this earth is a lie.
I won’t forget how he bid me farewell
I didn’t cry; I knew it was fate.
To visit his dreams, I’m casting new spells
But my spells are in vain, I’m afraid.
Does he sleep so serenely, locked in,
All because I’m barred and locked out,
Or is the bright-eyed tender Sirin
Already singing to him from a cloud?
Хорони, хорони меня, ветер!
Родные мои не пришли,
Надо мною блуждающий вечер
И дыханье тихой земли.
Я была, как и ты, свободной,
Но я слишком хотела жить.
Видишь, ветер, мой труп холодный,
И некому руки сложить.
Закрой эту черную рану
Покровом вечерней тьмы
И вели голубому туману
Надо мною читать псалмы.
Чтобы мне легко, одинокой,
Отойти к последнему сну,
Прошуми высокой осокой
Про весну, про мою весну.
« More than a woman / at the hour of a meeting! / Laurel-hewn, / red rags, / slashed blood — / snow. Here they are, close steel cohort, / pinned to the Kremlin wall, / sleeping / in a row. Laurel — instead of stone / and the Kremlin — rail. / You don’t need / God’s ...»
«The poems grow like heaven’s stars and roses, / Like beauty too — unneeded in my clan. / And for the garlands and apotheosis / There’s one response — how can this be my plan? We sleep — and through the slabs of stone then flutter / The fragrant and four-petalled heav’nly guest...»
«At him on windows tap the roses, / And wraps the smarmy chord its shroud... / He will not change his haughty poses, / A Byronist — oh, how he’s proud! In velvet shimmer of the garden / With shepherdess does cupid play. / The adolescent’s features harden, / A Byronist — he can...»
«Rummage with your torches / All the moonlit night! / Charted are land’s porches — / But it’s lost from sight. Lapped up from the saucer — / Gleams the bottom glazed. / Can you go back ever / To the house they’ve razed? Second birth’s requirement, / Land renewed must lead....»