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.
«An oblong, tight oval — / Your black dress's taper... / Young grandmother! Who kissed / Those haughty lips of yours? / / Hands that played Chopin's waltzes / In the household's rooms... / Curls, tight like spirals, / Hang at the edges of an icy face. / / Dark, forward and sop...»
«I will sew myself black trousers / from the velvet of my voice. / And from three yards of sunset, a yellow blouse. / Along the world's main street, along its glossy lanes, / I will saunter with the gait of Don Juan, a fop. Let the earth, overripe and placid, cry out: / "You would rape the...»
«1 I don't believe forebodings, nor do omens / Frighten me. I do not run from slander / Nor from poison. On earth there is no death. / All are immortal. All is immortal. No need / To be afraid of death at seventeen / Nor yet at seventy. Reality and light / Exist, but neither death nor da...»
«My soul is borne out on the wind. / Through the opaqueness of her earthly case she glitters like a sword. / She is free; she rides her body as the whirlwind the storm. / She is free from the death of the flesh. / / Her passage is brief as the lightning, / As the flash of the outgoing se...»