It’s not your love I seek tonight.
It’s in a safe place now, it’s hidden…
Believe me that I haven’t written
Resentful letters to your bride.
But take this sensible suggestion:
Give her my poetry to read,
Give her my portraits for protection —
The groom must always be this sweet!
And yet, these fools, they need and chase
The sense of utter victory,
Much more than friendly company
And memories of first sweet days…
And once the last of bliss is spent
With your beloved in this heaven
And for the sated soul again
All suddenly becomes repellent —
In my triumphant night, don’t stray
Back to me. I won’t let you enter.
How could I help you anyway?
I have no cure for your contentment.
Я не любви твоей прошу.
Она теперь в надежном месте...
Поверь, что я твоей невесте
Ревнивых писем не пишу.
Но мудрые прими советы:
Дай ей читать мои стихи,
Дай ей хранить мои портреты —
Ведь так любезны женихи!
А этим дурочкам нужней
Сознанье полное победы,
Чем дружбы светлые беседы
И память первых нежных дней...
Когда же счастия гроши
Ты проживешь с подругой милой
И для пресыщенной души
Все станет сразу так постыло —
В мою торжественную ночь
Не приходи. Тебя не знаю.
И чем могла б тебе помочь?
От счастья я не исцеляю.
«6 The rest of you can eat me up / I just record your behaviour! / For you they’ll find dining tables / to lay you out This desk for me! Because I’ve been happy with little / there are foods I’ve never tasted. / The rest of you dine slowly. / You’ve eaten too much and too often....»
«The bus jumped, like a brazen / evil spirit, a demon / cutting across the traffic / in streets as cramped as footnotes, / it rushed on its way shaking / like a concert-hall vibrating / with applause. And we shook in it! / Demons too. Have you seen / seeds under a tap? We were / lik...»
«When I look at the flight of the leaves in / their floating down on to the paving of cobbles / and see them swept up as if by an / artist who has finished his picture at last I think how (already nobody likes either / the way I stand, or my thoughtful face) / a manifestly yellow, decidedl...»
«Morning and evening, darkness and light — / Fishermen black and fishermen white. / The world’s like an ocean; like fishes are we, / Like fishes that swim in the depths of the sea. The world’s like an ocean where fishermen wait, / Preparing their nets, their hooks and their bait. / H...»