Why did you pollute the water,
with vileness adulterate my bread?
Why did you make the final freedom
into a den of thieves instead?
Was it because I did not mock
the bitter fate of friends?
Was it because I’d not betrayed
my piteous native land?
So be it. There can be no poet
without a butcher and a butcher’s block.
Weeping we go, with guttering candle,
garbed in penitential smock.
Зачем вы отравили воду
И с грязью мой смешали хлеб?
Зачем последнюю свободу
Вы превращаете в вертеп?
За то, что я не издевалась
Над горькой гибелью друзей?
За то, что я верна осталась
Печальной родине моей?
Пусть так. Без палача и плахи
Поэту на земле не быть.
Нам покаянные рубахи,
Нам со свечой идти и выть.
«I could have loved the winter, / But the burden is heavy. / Even smoke cannot / Escape into the clouds. The sharply etched lines, / The unwieldy flight, / The pauperish blue / Of the tear-swollen ice. But I love snow, weakened / By the easy life above, / Sometimes glistening white,...»
«The yellow steam of Petersburg’s winter. / The yellow snow which clings to the flagstones... / I don’t know where you are, and where we are. / Only that we are part of each other. Did the tsar’s decree create us? / Did the Swedes forget to drown us? / Instead of a fairy tale our pas...»
«Beneath a shaggy fir tree, / Above a noisy stream / The devil’s swing is swinging, / Pushed by his hairy hand. He swings the swing while laughing, / Swing high, swing low, / Swing high, swing low, / The board is bent and creaking, / The rope is taut and chafing / Against a heavy b...»
«Among the worlds, in glimmering of stars, / The single Star is ever my attraction ... / Not ’cause I’d so loved Her so far, / But ’cause I live with others with aversion. And if my doubts were an awful plight, / I just from Her wait for the final answers, / Not ’cause She sends ...»