They’re void — the celebrations
Of these polled non-dates,
The wordless conversations,
The soundless words’ sets.
The never crossing glances
Are flying courses, wrong,
And just the tears are freightless —
They can flow for long.
And Moscow’s wild-roses
Are of the same mixed stuff…
And later they’ll call all this
“The never-dying love.”
Таинственной невстречи
Пустынны торжества,
Несказанные речи,
Безмолвные слова.
Нескрещенные взгляды
Не знают, где им лечь.
И только слезы рады,
Что можно долго течь.
Шиповник Подмосковья,
Увы! при чем-то тут...
И это все любовью
Бессмертной назовут.
«Under such blows / your narrow shoulders will redden / and flame, even in the snow. Your childlike hands / will lift up irons / and weave the heaviest ropes. Barefoot on glass / your slight feet will go, / barefoot on glass in the blooded sand. And I will bum for you / like a black ...»
«Somehow we got through the miles of Moscow, / left the Sparrow Hills, and found the small, familiar church. / Our open sled was filled with straw, and roughly hooded / with coarse, frozen cloth that hurt us. Then in Uglitch the children played knucklebones. / When we drove through it, I rea...»
«I spoke with a child's gibberish to authority, / I was afraid to eat oysters, / I looked at the guardsmen out of the corner of my eye. Everyone tortured me about this. / but how could I sulk in the foolish beaver miter of a bishop / by the Egyptian porticoes of the banks? No gypsy girl eve...»
«In the name of the higher tribes of the future, / in the name of their foreboding nobility, / I have had to give up my drinking cup at the family feast, / my joy too, then my honor. This cutthroat wolf century has jumped on my shoulders, / but I don’t wear the hide of a wolf — / no, t...»