The threshing barn is stifling and hot,
I laugh, but in my heart, I weep from spite.
My old friend mumbles to me: “Jinx it not,
Can’t you discern that luck is on our side!”
I listen to my old friend’s words with doubt.
He’s lost his sight, he’s ludicrous and vile.
He spent his whole life trampling the ground
Of long and dreary trails in denial.
My fragile voice is crying out with sorrow,
The ringing voice of those who knew no better:
“Our knapsacks are all emptied and tomorrow
Just promises more hunger and foul weather!”
Под навесом тёмной риги жарко,
Я смеюсь, а в сердце злобно плачу.
Старый друг бормочет мне: «Не каркай!
Мы ль не встретим на пути удачу!»
Но я другу старому не верю.
Он смешной, незрячий и убогий,
Он всю жизнь свою шагами мерил
Длинные и скучные дороги.
И звенит, звенит мой голос ломкий,
Звонкий голос не узнавших счастья:
«Ах, пусты дорожные котомки,
А на завтра голод и ненастье!»
«We look at woods and say: / Here is a forest of ships and of masts, / The pink pines / Stand free to their tops from mossy accretions, / They should creak in a storm / As do lone-standing stone pines / In the infuriated foresdess air; / Beneath the salty heel of wind the plumb line sta...»
«I’ll chase through the gypsy camp of dark streets / After a spray of cherries in a black spring carriage / After its hood of snow and endless windmill creak. I only recall the rimfire of chestnut curls / Smoked over with bitterness, no, with sour formic acid; / They left an amber dryness ...»
«Last night I tell you, I do not lie, / Up to the waist in melting snow, / I struggled from some strange railway halt. / I saw a hut and entered in: / Black monks were drinking tea and salt / While a gypsy girl made up to them. At the bedhead all the while / She kept on beckoning with he...»
«I returned to my city, familiar as tears, / As veins, as mumps from childhood years. You’ve returned here, so swallow as quick as you can / The fish oil of Leningrad’s riverside lamps. Recognize when you can December’s brief day, / Egg yolk folded into its ominous tar. Petersburg! I s...»