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.
«Like a lily that looks into the mountain stream, / You stood like my first ever song of my dream, / Was there a winner at that, and who won the scene, / The stream by the flower or the flower by the stream? / / Your young little soul grasped all in some way, / All that magical power all...»
«I had a dream: I slept, and I imagined / That I was dead and lost in reverie at that; / And lovingly, that reverie by kind of magic / Had given rise to hope in my depressing heart. / / What kind of joy I want, I don't know, really. / There rings the bell, — and all is clarified; / M...»
«I am bored with perpetual verbiage on all that is fine and gracious; / All these chats only make me feel weary and yawn... / Leaving the pedants I run to converse with you, dear friend; / I know that these eyes of yours, the wise dark black eyes, / Have more beauty in them than hundreds of f...»
«I fell in love with you one amber day / When, born in azure glow / From every twig, its thanks to say, / Warm languor trickling would flow. White as hop blooms, lake waves foamed and rolled, / So white their bodies fair. / The laughing Lel the love-god pulled / The sunbeams of black hai...»