Bella Akhmadulina
The sound of steps recedes along the street...

The sound of steps recedes along the street.
My friends depart, I hear their sluggish stride.
This lazy sound of their departing feet
Is pleasant to the empt’ness outside

Their businesses are left, for lack of use
And music is not gracing theirs dominions,
But as in autrefois, Degas's danseuse
Is readjusting her cerule'n pinions.

Well, let your fright not wake you with disgust,
Defenseless, from your sleep a little groggy.
For perfidy unfathomable lust,
My friends, is rendering your eyesight rather foggy.

Oh solitude, why is your will so stark!
With iron compass indiscreetly gleaming,
How calmly you complete the fretful arc,
Discarding unconvincing, useless pleading.

So call me up and give me my reward!
I am your darling, sheltered in your kindness,
Take me to you, I want to be your ward,
and solace find in your morose politeness.

Oh let me find amidst your wooded heights,
to ends of twigs reluctantly progressing,
the farthest leaf, and bring it to my eyes,
and recognize abandonment as blessing.

Give me the gifts of quiet reading rooms
and harmony of your precise recitals,
sagaciously, I'll forget the tombs
of dead, and their still living rivals.

And I will learn of wisdom and distress,
the things around will trust me with their notions,
and Nature will recline against my breast
and share the childhood world of her emotions.

And only then — from tears and from twilight,
from ignorance, my friends will gain their living.
Their lovely faces, splendid in delight,
will form, and then dissolve themselves from being.

Translated by Igor Mazin