Confusion
III
You approached me, smiling mildly,
As by civility’s demand,
Then, half tenderly and half idly,
With a kiss you brushed my hand —
And the faces, mysterious, ancient,
Cast their gazes on me forthright…
All ten years of my trepidations,
Each and every sleepless night
I then placed in a quiet word
And I voiced it — in vain, unsure.
You walked off and with order restored,
My soul was empty and pure
Смятение
3
Как велит простая учтивость,
Подошёл ко мне, улыбнулся,
Полуласково, полулениво
Поцелуем руки коснулся —
И загадочных древних ликов
На меня поглядели очи…
Десять лет замираний и криков,
Все мои бессонные ночи
Я вложила в тихое слово
И сказала его — напрасно.
Отошел ты, и стало снова
На душе и пусто и ясно.
«Let your Mind’s fire break through the roaring, / Just concentrate, forget the past / And try to grasp that a new era / Has come; you’re now the least, the last. And all you knew, all you discovered / In your books’ jungles, your dream’s shout / Lies as a trace that’s hardly not...»
«She stands there with a sly expression, smiling. / Holding a huge scroll in her marble hands. / She notes life, death, and fame in her compiling, / Records all time, all people in all lands. And she (who’s not to blame) gets bored and weary / With fates of slaves, chiefs, races, patriarch...»
«Wedding wreaths crown the mountains. / I’m ecstatic... I’m young. / And all over my mountains / Such a pure chill is hung. And behold — to my rock / Came a gray-haired hunchback, shuffling-stumbling. / And the gift that he brought / Was pineapples from an underground dungeon. O h...»
«Once there lived both he and I; / To be friends we had to die. Skeleton, he'd visit me... / Winters, summers... frequently. Simple heart and solid bone; / We strolled this graveyard alone. And with laughter he’d recall / That gay day: our funeral. How they bore box behind box... / Ho...»