There is a fleeting, wondrous moment
during autumn’s early days:
time stands motionless, time’s a crystal,
evenings bathe in brilliant rays.
Where sickles swung and crops were toppled,
there’s just an empty wasteland now.
A strand of glittering web is all you notice
across an idle track cut by a plough.
The air has emptied. Birds no longer chatter,
though there’s some time to wait for winter’s snow and rain,
and pure and warm, a gentle blue is flowing
across the resting plains.
Есть в осени первоначальной
Короткая, но дивная пора —
Весь день стоит как бы хрустальный,
И лучезарны вечера...
Где бодрый серп гулял и падал колос,
Теперь уж пусто всё — простор везде, —
Лишь паутины тонкий волос
Блестит на праздной борозде.
Пустеет воздух, птиц не слышно боле,
Но далеко еще до первых зимних бурь —
И льется чистая и теплая лазурь
На отдыхающее поле...
«With this inhuman fate / How can one argue? How can one fight? / This is mirage, illusion. / Still this blue evening yet / Is my domain, possession. And the sky is red between the trees / While it is pearly on the sides… / In lilacs the nightingale still whistles. / The ant crawls i...»
«Spring exultation, nightingales, the moon / on southern seas – they make my poor head spin / with boredom. More than that. I disappear. / The real me lives elsewhere. Far to the North. Berlin, poor Russian Paris, filthy Nice – / a dream from which I soon will find release. Petersburg. ...»
«I will gradually become trained, / March with others, day out, day in. / Will not worry about the mundane. / Following regulations feel shame. They stand – I stand. They sit – I sit. / Will remember my hundred-digit sign. / Be loyally grateful to hell for bloody / Stars in constell...»
«It is well that there’s no Tsar. / It is well that there’s no Russia. / Well, that God does not exist. Only the yellow sunrise, / Only the stars made of ice, / Only the million centuries. Well — that there is no one, / Well — that there is nothing, / So black and so lifeless, ...»