Yes, I had loved those meetings of the nights —
Upon small table a glass filled with ice,
Above black coffee thick and smelly steam,
From the red heater heavy winter heat,
The stinging mirth of literary parable
And first look of the friend, helpless and terrible.
А. Л.
Да, я любила их, те сборища ночные, —
На маленьком столе стаканы ледяные,
Над черным кофеем пахучий, зимний пар,
Камина красного тяжелый, зимний жар,
Веселость едкую литературной шутки
И друга первый взгляд, беспомощный и жуткий.
«What does my heart indeed just need / to be happy? So not a lot... / I like animals, trees, God, / A beam — at noon,darkness — at night. And on the edge of outside / I'll say: where was affliction? / I sang, and if I ever cried — / so only with tears of admiration.»
«If all silver that falls to us / At night from the moon, / And all gold that goes to us / From the sun at noon, I'd just bring to her...She'd tell me, / "Oh, my dear poet, / Give me such a precious metal / That is underground!"»
«When the moonlight dispassionately illuminates / The world that is asleep at night,quite all this world, / Sometimes it seems this light just penetrates / In the departed world like under a burial vault. By the moonlight it seems this world is afterlife, / And that before this life we lived...»
«A capricious, avaricious kind — / Like fire, the Russian mind is dire: / Irrepressible, lucidity for hire, / So gay — and gloom will always find. Like an undeviating needle, / It sees the pole in ripples and murky still; / From abstract daydreams in life’s cradle / It shows the co...»