There’s hardly any body left,
The tortured lips have all but withered!
I didn’t want this kind of death,
The time-frame that I chose was different.
I had an image: two big clouds
Collide together, fast and free,
And lightning’s fire plummets down,
And mighty ecstasy rings loud,
And both, like angels, come for me.
Как страшно изменилось тело,
Как рот измученный поблёк!
Я смерти не такой хотела,
Не этот назначала срок.
Казалось мне, что туча с тучей
Сшибётся где-то в вышине
И молнии огонь летучий
И голос радости могучей,
Как ангелы, сойдут ко мне.
«In fields hopeless and dumb / Droops the pale-bladed grain; / It is dozing and numb / Amid dreams that are vain... / With a high sudden hum / The field tosses its mane: / "Unto us Christ is come!" / The wild news shakes the plain. / Like a wind-beaten drum / Shouts the quivering gr...»
«My insatiable memory is like / A melting asphalt roadway: / I remember all who have passed along it, / Every movement of their life... / The tracks of iron wheels, of teeth, / The rusty tracks of injury and anguish. / Nearby the sweet birdlike prints / Of a dead daughter's little shoes...»
«Where firs by snow all silvered stand, / Where palms grow in the golden south, / From home to home, from land to land, / His words pass on from mouth to mouth. On shores both near and far away, / By more than one new generation / In all five continents, today / His name is held in vener...»
«In peace lie hills and fields and dark-blue valleys, / And woods like lazy billows rise and fall; / Yet still before me, tortuous and silent, / A line, invisible, runs through them all. All the way from Ladoga* you'll trace it. / Right to the Gulf of Finland it does run; / You'll find it ...»