In early autumn sweetly wistful,
there is a short but wonderous interim,
when days seem made as though of crystal,
with evenings luminously dim...
Without their tillers, empty fields look wider;
where sickles ravaged in the harvester’s ebb,
a single thread left by a spider
still speaks of the unravelled web.
Warblers have gone, afraid of future shadows,
yet far away is winter’s firstborn storm,
and heaven pours its azure, pure and warm,
on quietly resting fields and meadows...
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...
«Not the lyre of a lover / I’ll carry through my land / The rattle of a leper / Will sing in my hand.»
«You will not grasp her with your mind / or cover with a common label, / for Russia is one of a kind — / believe in her, if you are able...»
«The heat was fierce. Great forests were on fire. / Time dragged its feet in dust. A cock was crowing / in an adjacent lot. As I pushed open / my garden-gate I saw beside the road / a wandering Serb asleep upon a bench / his back against the palings. He was lean / and very black, and dow...»
«Fierce heat. The forests were afire. Time / Dragged on dully. At the neighbor’s dacha / A rooster crowed. I went out of the gate. / There, on a bench, leaning against the fence, / A Serb, a drifter, dozed, black and skinny. / A heavy silver cross hung / On his half-bare breast. Drops o...»