Tyranny itself seduced you.
Its sword has mown you like reeds.
The Law is incorruptibly impartial.
The LawТs infallible in word and deed.
Disloyalty is shunned by our people.
TheyТll scorn your names. Abuse will heap.
Your sons will never know your exploit,
hidden in time, a rotten carcass buried deep!
Victims of foolish notions!
Perhaps you had a youthful vision!
Perhaps you thought you saw
your thin blood trickling,
covering the ice-caps
as if alone it could thaw
that age-old polar face.
Why, it would scarce have time to sparkle
when up thereТd gust a breath of iron winter
to murder every tiny trace!
Декабристам
Вас развратило Самовластье,
И меч его вас поразил, —
И в неподкупном беспристрастье
Сей приговор Закон скрепил.
Народ, чуждаясь вероломства,
Поносит ваши имена —
И ваша память от потомства,
Как труп в земле, схоронена.
О жертвы мысли безрассудной,
Вы уповали, может быть,
Что станет вашей крови скудной,
Чтоб вечный полюс растопить!
Едва, дымясь, она сверкнула,
На вековой громаде льдов,
Зима железная дохнула —
И не осталось и следов.
«It's February. Weeping take ink. / Find words in a sobbing rush / For February, while black spring / Burns through the rumbling slush. And take a cab. Ride for a rouble / Through wheel racket and bell's throbbing / To where the downpour makes more din / Than the sound of ink and sobbing...»
«Dreadful! It drips and it listens — / whether it's all alone in the world / crushing a twig like lace at the window, / or is someone watching? Palpable, though, is the pressure / of porous earth's taut swellings, / and far off, audible as in August, / midnight ripens in fields. No, n...»
«The terrible! — After each drop, it stays / All ears: is it sole still, trying / To squeeze the branches like wrinkled lace, / Or is a witness prying? But, choking out loud from the heavy weight / Of swelling, the spongy soil widens, / And heard far away, as in August late, / The ...»
«At twilight the swifts have no way / Of stemming the cool blue cascade. / It bursts from clamouring throats, / A torrent that cannot be stayed. At twilight the swifts have no way / Of holding back, high overhead, / Their clarion shouting: Oh, triumph, / Look, look, how the earth has fle...»