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?
«Let life torment, and the day lived / Trouble with echoes of bitter thoughts, / And sorrow gnaw the soul cunningly. / Look in the skies of night; / Where the starry dew falls, / Where the Milky Way, like a streak, / Has lain to multiply light with light; / Look humbly into the miracles...»
«Don’t listen to me, no worth to it: the poor / Words I speak; I lie. And if / the heart has conquering knowledge. / I keep it from people. Like children, people are evil and innocent, / Loving, they know how to offend. / They aren’t of mountains — buts valleys… / They need to kn...»
«To return to simplicity — why? / Perhaps I do know why. / But that returning is not for everyone. / Those like me, cannot. Through a nettling shrub I pass, / It is prehensile, I will not break away... / Let me fall, / I will not reach a second simplicity, / There is no going back.»
«Brightly the hooves clatter... / What is it, by the bridge? / All erased, all is forgotten, / In the secret of thoughts, a void... / I only listen to the hooves, / to the din and cries by the bridge. It starts running stoutly, huddling, / The multilegged It. / Entrancing — and borin...»