And made war with the heavens.
Apocalypse
With implacable hand, time is writing
Shakespeare’s twenty-fourth drama.
We who share the formidable feast
Would gladly read Hamlet, Caesar, Lear
As we cross over the leaden river;
Gladly accompany Juliet’s sweet bier,
Today, with singing and torches,
Gladly peek through the window at Macbeth
Trembling among the hired murderers —
Only not this, not this, not this,
This we have no strength to read!
И сделалась война на небе.
Апок.
Двадцать четвертую драму Шекспира
Пишет время бесстрастной рукой.
Сами участники чумного пира,
Лучше мы Гамлета, Цезаря, Лира
Будем читать над свинцовой рекой;
Лучше сегодня голубку Джульетту
С пеньем и факелом в гроб провожать,
Лучше заглядывать в окна к Макбету,
Вместе с наемным убийцей дрожать,—
Только не эту, не эту, не эту,
Эту уже мы не в силах читать!
«With this inhuman fate / How can one argue? How can one fight? / This is mirage, illusion. / Still this blue evening yet / Is my domain, possession. And the sky is red between the trees / While it is pearly on the sides… / In lilacs the nightingale still whistles. / The ant crawls i...»
«Spring exultation, nightingales, the moon / on southern seas – they make my poor head spin / with boredom. More than that. I disappear. / The real me lives elsewhere. Far to the North. Berlin, poor Russian Paris, filthy Nice – / a dream from which I soon will find release. Petersburg. ...»
«I will gradually become trained, / March with others, day out, day in. / Will not worry about the mundane. / Following regulations feel shame. They stand – I stand. They sit – I sit. / Will remember my hundred-digit sign. / Be loyally grateful to hell for bloody / Stars in constell...»
«It is well that there’s no Tsar. / It is well that there’s no Russia. / Well, that God does not exist. Only the yellow sunrise, / Only the stars made of ice, / Only the million centuries. Well — that there is no one, / Well — that there is nothing, / So black and so lifeless, ...»