Not like other people, not every week,
Not all the time, in a century but twice,
I prayed to you: please intelligibly
Reiterate the words of creation.
Unbearable to you are the admixtures
Of intimacies and people's slavishness.
How could you possibly make me happy?
With what would you consume the earth's salt?
Не как люди, не еженедельно,
Не всегда, в столетье раза два
Я молил тебя: членораздельно
Повтори творящие слова.
И тебе ж невыносимы смеси
Откровений и людских неволь.
Как же хочешь ты, чтоб я был весел,
С чем бы стал ты есть земную соль?
«On the pavement / of my trampled soul / the soles of madmen / stamp the prints of rude, crude words. / Where cities / hang / and in the noose of clouds / the towers’ / crooked spires / congeal — / I go / and solitary weep / that cross-roads / crucify / policemen.»
«It seems, I shall never grow accustomed / to sitting in the “Bristol,” / drinking tea, / lying by the line — / I shall upset the glasses, / clamber on the table / “Listen / literary brothers! / You sit, / eyes drowning in tea, / your velvet elbows worn with scribbling. / ...»
«Beat on the street the march of rebellion, / sweeping over the heads of the proud; / we, the flood of a second deluge, / shall wash the world like a bursting cloud. Days are a bright steed. / Years drag glum. / Our great god is Speed! / Our heart a bellowing drum! What is richer than o...»
«For the Red Marines: 1918 Rally the ranks into a march! / Now’s no time to quibble or browse, / Silence, you orators! / You / have the floor, / Comrade Mauser. / Enough of living by laws / that Adam and Eve have left. / Hustle old history’s horse. / Left! / Left! / Left! ...»