To lose the freshness of the words and sense, for us,
Is it same as for an artist to lose vision,
Or for an actor — voice and motion,
Or for a gorgeous woman — her finesse?
But do not seek now for yourself to keep
What heaven has given to you below:
We have been judged — and we ourselves both know —
To give away, and not to keep.
Or else alone you go to heal the blind,
To know yourself in heavy hour of doubt
The students' smug shaudenfreude
And the uncaring of mankind.
Нам свежесть слов и чувства простоту
Терять не то ль, что живописцу — зренье
Или актеру — голос и движенье,
А женщине прекрасной — красоту?
Но не пытайся для себя хранить
Тебе дарованное небесами:
Осуждены — и это знаем сами —
Мы расточать, а не копить.
Иди один и исцеляй слепых,
Чтобы узнать в тяжелый час сомненья
Учеников злорадное глумленье
И равнодушие толпы.
«Take for joy from my outstretched palms / A little honey and a little sun / As we were implored by the bees of Proserpine. No one can loose a boat that is unmoored. / No one can hear the shadow shod in fur. / One cannot track down fear in the dense forest of life. We are left only with kis...»
«Through the dark gypsy camp, the streets of night, I shall be rushing / Seeking a blossoming alder branch in a black-springed sleigh, / For a bonnet of snow I shall be searching, for the endless mill-wheel noise. I remember a chestnut strand of hair — as a misfired shot / Smoked through wit...»
«I cannot breathe; the solid earth wriggles with worms / and not a star speaks out. / Yet the gods know there is music aloft, / for the station trembles, the Aonians sing, / and, soon to be rent by the engine s whistle, / the air sleeps like a violin. A gleaming park. The glass dome of the...»
«Return to my city, dearer to me than tears, / to its veins, the swollen glands of childhood nights, / return, remembering — swallow, O quickly then / the codliver oil of Leningrad’s rivered lights. / Recognize swiftly that small day of December: / see, in the sinister asphalt, egg yolk...»