Strange boy, I’ve gone mad at last,
Wednesday, around three!
On my ring finger, a wasp
Stung me angrily.
I accidentally squeezed my grip,
And it died, I think,
But sharper than a spindle’s tip
Was its poisoned sting.
Strange one, is it you I’ll mourn,
And will your smile linger?
Look! How beautifully adorned
Is this ring upon my finger!
Я сошла с ума, о мальчик странный,
В среду, в три часа!
Уколола палец безымянный
Мне звенящая оса.
Я её нечаянно прижала,
И, казалось, умерла она,
Но конец отравленного жала,
Был острей веретена.
О тебе ли я заплачу, странном,
Улыбнется ль мне твоё лицо?
Посмотри! На пальце безымянном
Так красиво гладкое кольцо.
«We live without feeling our country’s pulse, / We can’t hear ourselves, no one hears us, / If a word is uttered by chance, / Kremlin highlander is remembered at once. / Like worms his thick fingers are fat, / His words like pound weights are correct, / His cockroach moustache is full...»
«We live, not sensing our own country beneath us, / Ten steps away they dissolve, our speeches, / But where enough meet for half-conversation, / The Kremlin hillbilly is our preoccupation. / They’re like slimy worms, his fat fingers, / His words, as solid as weights of measure. / In his...»
«We live, deaf to the land beneath us, / Ten steps away no one hears our speeches, / All we hear is the Kremlin mountaineer, / The murderer and peasant-slayer. / His fingers are fat as grubs / And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips, / His cockroach whiskers leer / And ...»
«We live, but cannot feel the earth, / And if we speak, we can’t be heard. But wherever you hear a half-conversation, / They talk of that backwoods lout in the Kremlin. Ten fat fingers like greasy worms, / Each of his words weighs fifty pounds. His moustache bristles in cockroach laughter,...»