Give me comfortless seasons of sickness,
Visitations of wrath and of wrong
On my house; Lord, take child and companion,
And destroy the sweet power of song.
Thus I pray at each matins, each vespers,
After these many wearying days,
That the storm-cloud which broods over Russia
May be changed to a nimbus ablaze.
Дай мне горькие годы недуга,
Задыханья, бессонницу, жар,
Отыми и ребёнка, и друга,
И таинственный песенный дар —
Так молюсь за Твоей литургией
После стольких томительных дней,
Чтобы туча над тёмной Россией
Стала облаком в славе лучей.
«Night. Street. Lamplight. Pharmacy. / A dim senseless glow all about. / Live twenty more years, look around, what’s to see? / Nothing will change. No way out. Then die — and all begins over to breathe and to be, / And the same bleary haze hovers over the damp / Night, icy ripples...»
«The day will come; I’ll disappear, / While in this selfsame empty room, / That table, bench, icon austere / The same contours of space consume. And just as now will flutter in / That silken butterfly serene, / To rustle, palpitate and ding / Against the ceiling’s bluish-green. And ...»
«I’m glad that you’re not indisposed with feelings steeped in me. / I’m glad that I’m not indisposed with feelings steeped in you. / That never will earth’s gravid sphere float free / Beneath our giddy footsteps specked with dew. / I’m glad that we can laugh capriciously, / Ligh...»
«Midnight estate, Genghis Khanerate! / Rustle, blue birches. / Bright sunset, Zarathustrate! / And you, blue sky, Mozartate! / You twilight-cloud, be Goya! / And you at night, cloud, rainate! / A whirlwind of smiles just flew by, / Laughing with claws of shrieking, / Then I saw the ha...»