Those poems that I wrote and forgot
and burnt before I could forget them —
there are not enough hammers and chisels
to knock them down and beat them down.
Those poems that I shouted out on the radio
and published in the newspaper:
better for me to have silenced them, so to speak —
I forged not steel but paper.
No matter! I'm still walking and breathing.
I'll still write something more revealing.
Те стихи, что я написал и забыл
И сжег перед тем, как забыть —
Не хватило б резцов, недостало б зубил,
Чтобы их сковырнуть или сбить.
Те стихи, что по радио я прокричал
И в газете опубликовал —
Лучше я бы их, так сказать, промолчал,
Я не сталь, а бумагу ковал.
Ничего! Я покуда хожу и дышу.
Я еще настоящее напишу.
«December… Snowdrifts in the yard… / Your words and you I still remember; / How in the snow-night, silver-starred, / So shyly shook your every member. In pearly lace of old Marseilles / You day-dreamed by the velvet curtain: / Around you suitors eyed their prey / On low-slung sofas, ...»
«When our vigor is descending, / And strength beginning to decay, / We must, like temporary tenants, / For new arrivals clear the way. Then save us, our guardian angel, / From harsh reproofs and petty fuss, / From calumny against the changes / The future has in store for us. Let us not ...»
«As Darkness descends on the ocean, / As Night spreads her silvery veil, / A brigantine cuts through the waters / And glides downwind at full sail. Her tall topsail masts are not bending, / Her vanes are not moved by the air, / Her cannons face open deck hatches / With silent indifferent...»
«When our decrepit energies turn traitor, / when, like former tenants, / we let our house to the young, / save us then, good spirit, / from faint-hearted reproaches, / from slander, from animosity / at our changing life, / from feelings of suppressed spite / at the world which is bein...»