Not weeks, not months, — it took us years
To separate. And finally, today,
We feel true freedom’s gentle breeze
And the wreaths on our heads are gray.
There are no more betrayals or treason,
And you don’t have to listen all night
To the streaming current of reasons
That prove me indisputably right.
Не недели, не месяцы — годы
Расставались. И вот наконец
Холодок настоящей свободы
И седой над висками венец.
Больше нет ни измен, ни предательств,
И до света не слушаешь ты,
Как струится поток доказательств
Несравненной моей правоты.
«We walk along the streets like in a dream. / We look at women, and we coffee drink. / But real words we still can not reveal, / And the approximate we do not feel. What shall we do? Go back to Petersburg? / Or fall in love? Or blow the Operá? / Or simply lie in bed — which’s cold, / ...»
«The alarming roll of a drum / Stirs the mist of an early morn, / Joan of Arc on a galloping horse / To besieged Orleans is borne. To the clinking of wine glasses, / To the strains of an old minuet, / In the Petit Trianon* passes / Care-free life of Marie Antoinette... A small lamp ligh...»
«Beside their big fire they had laid themselves down, / Their powerless bodies prostrate. / A bullet had gone through the temple of one / To home in the head of his mate. The hands of the two had locked in a vice / The now dead machine gun they’d manned, / And neither the storm nor the s...»
«I’ve never been even once in a bar-room, / I’ve never drunk whisky neat with sailors, / I’ll never, I guess, on a horse go charging / Across the desert steppes of Arabia. I'm not cut out for hauling in canvas, / For waving an oar, braving stormy weather. / She loves a young salt, do...»