I had a bird in my hand
but my bird has flown.
I held a bird in my hand
but am now all alone.
My small bird has left me
full of anger and rage;
my blue bird has left me
alone in a cage.
Небольшая синица была в руках,
небольшая была синица,
небольшая синяя птица.
Улетела, оставив меня в дураках.
Улетела, оставив меня одного
в изумленьи, печали и гневе,
не оставив мне ничего, ничего,
и теперь — с журавлями в небе.
«Upon the cobbles / of my foot-clobbered soul, / the steps of loonies / twine their grinding rhymes. / Where the towns / are hung / and in the nooses of clouds / the crooked necks of towers / are wrung, / I start to cry / because / by the crossroads / the cops are crucified.»
«Please Listen! / If stars are lit, / it is something / that somebody needs? / Someone wants them / To be and to last, / Even calls them pearls, those specs of spit. / And suffocating / In the blizzards of midday dust, / He bursts in on God, / afraid it's too late to s...»
«I am back in my city, dear to me like my tears / Like small veins, swollen glands of my infancy years. You have come here, now go ahead in one gulp / Down the fish-oil of Leningrad’s river lights lamps Can you make out this day of December that’s marred / By the egg-yolk stirred into the...»
«We exist out of touch with the land underneath / Our words from ten paces conceal our grief / Just the Kremlin's highlander's voice's present. / The soul crusher and slayer of peasants (Version. / Where's enough for a half talk words landed, / They'll remind of the Kremlin's highlander.)...»