He's taken all from me, executioner God.
Health, strength of will, the air, and sleep.
Only one thing did he leave me, and that
Is you, that I may continue to praise him.
Всё отнял у меня казнящий бог:
Здоровье, силу воли, воздух, сон,
Одну тебя при мне оставил он,
Чтоб я ему еще молиться мог.
«A Psalter of Tsar' Aleksii, / Its pages — scarves, funeral groats, / Restless Russia / Wanders, wheezing, through decrees. The peasant jacket is torn, / The disgraced headscarf flaps . / Now a bench by' the door would be good, / And tales about Constantinople, Honey buns on the tabl...»
«I have forgotten what is in my hands: / A heart, a hat, or a cane? / In the gardens of the Lord / Grape bunches ripen. Ahead the cry: "don't," / Behind: "return." / All that is quiet is the path / Leading upwards. Shouldn't I follow it? / Maybe, if no sin is committed, / On the azu...»
«All that was in the soul, all was lost again; / I lay down in the grass, sad and bored, / And a flower lifted its lovely form above me, / A grasshopper standing in front of it on guard. / / Then I opened the weighty volume I had before me, / And on the first page saw a drawing of a plan...»
«Yesterday reflecting upon death, / My soul suddenly grew bitter. / Sad day! Age-old nature / Gazed at me from the forest's depths. And the anguish of separation / Pierced my heart, and in that moment / I could hear all — the evening grass, / The water talking, and the stone's dead cry...»