(From the "Middle Night Poems")
Which a sonata will you be
Hidden by me in — with a care?
How uneasily, for me
Will call you, utterly unfair
Because so close and so good
You were for me, tho’ for a moment…
Your dream — dissolving in a solvent,
Where death — just levy to the mute.
В которую-то из сонат
Тебя я прячу осторожно.
О! Как ты позовешь тревожно,
Непоправимо виноват
В том, что приблизился ко мне
Хотя бы на одно мгновенье...
Твоя мечта — исчезновенье,
Где смерть лишь жертва тишине.
«Through the murk the moon is veering, / Ghost-accompanist of night, / On the melancholy clearings / Pouring melancholy light. Runs the troika with its dreary / Toneless jangling sleigh-bell on / Over dismal snow' I'm weary, / Hungry, frozen to the bone. Coachman in a homely fashion's ...»
«Through the misty billows’ fingers / Threads the moon with pallid shade, / On the dismal glades she lingers, / Casts her dismal beams’ parade. Down the listless winter passage / Races troika pulled by hounds, / Tolls the sleigh-bell’s one-note message, / Fills the air with tedious...»
«Down through shivering fog, the moon now / Makes its way across the night, / Soaking melancholy meadows / In a melancholy light. Down the road through dismal winter, / My quick carriage carries on / And the sleigh-bell's tuneless tinkle / Is a numbing monotone. Notes familiar in the mu...»
«...where the drover came from, no one knew. Their affinity made the heavens slate / the desert for a miracle. There, they chose to light / a fire and camp, the cave in a vortex of snow. / Not divining his role, the Infant drowsed / in a halo of curls that would quickly become / accustomed...»