The Roman orator was speaking
as citizens started to fight:
УI rose late, and while I was walking
was chased and captured by RomeТs nightФ.
So be it! But making your farewells, you saw
in grandeur and with awe,
RomeТs bloody star go down.
Blessed is he who visits this life
at its fateful moments of strife:
the all-wise sent him an invitation
to speak with them at their celebrations.
HeТs the witness of high affairs,
knows their councils, sits on them,
and a living god while there,
has drunk immortality with them.
Оратор римский говорил
Средь бурь гражданских и тревоги:
«Я поздно встал — и на дороге
Застигнут ночью Рима был!»
Так!.. Но, прощаясь с римской славой,
С Капитолийской высоты
Во всем величье видел ты
Закат звезды ее кровавый!..
Счастлив, кто посетил сей мир
В его минуты роковые!
Его призвали всеблагие[6]
Как собеседника на пир.
Он их высоких зрелищ зритель,
Он в их совет допущен был —
И заживо, как небожитель,
Из чаши их бессмертье пил!
«7. Thinking of something else, undiscovered, / like a buried treasure, I absentmindedly / One by one, poppy by poppy / I beheaded my whole garden. So, someday, in the dry / Summer, on the edge of a field, / Death's absent-minded hand / Will pluck off a head — mine.»
«Between two — a hot fur! A Hand — hot fluff! / Circling — around the head. / But under the fur — bliss, under the fluff / Gaga — you tremble! Even the goddess of the thousands / — In the nests of dark stars — / No matter how you rotate, how gently / — Ach! — It ...»
«He is gone — I cannot eat: / The taste — of stale bread. / All — chalk. / Anything I am drawn to. ...I am the bread that was / And the snow that was. / And the snow was not white / And the bread was unloved.»
«— Your years — Mountain, / Your time — Tsars. / Fool! love — Old. / — Others! In love — Old: Monsters, old roots, / Stone altars / Old Cretans, old / Aging warriors...»