Throughout blue nights
glisten mountains’ eyes,
eyes of death, eyes of fright,
by icy horror paralysed.
Charmed by some spell
till Dawn’s first beams,
in hazy menace they dream,
like all those ancient kings who fell.
But let the East begin to shine
and the fatal charms are broken.
High up and first in line
the eldest brother has awoken.
From the head of the next there rolls
a stream onto the heads of all the others,
till, glistening in crowns of gold,
all the family’s resurrected with the brothers!
Сквозь лазурный сумрак ночи
Альпы снежные глядят —
Помертвелые их очи
Льдистым ужасом разят —
Властью некой обаянны,
До восшествия Зари
Дремлют, грозны и туманны,
Словно падшие цари!..
Но Восток лишь заалеет,
Чарам гибельным конец —
Первый в небе просветлеет
Брата старшего венец.
И с главы большого брата
На меньших бежит струя,
И блестит в венцах из злата
Вся воскресшая Семья!..
«We’ve done enough, we’ve said enough — / let’s sit in silence, without smiling; / low-lying clouds are shedding snow / and heaven’s light is slowly fading. The brittle willows rage and split / in an unspeakable pitched battle. / "Until tomorrow, then," I say. / "As for today, ...»
«At blazing noon, in Dagestan’s deep valley, / a bullet in my chest, dead still I lay, / as steam yet rose above my wound, I tallied / each drop of blood, as life now now seeped away. Alone I lay within a sandy hollow, / as jagged ledges teemed there, rising steep, / with sun-scorched pe...»
«We pronounced / the simplest, poorest words / as if they had never been said. / We were saying / sun, light, grass / as people pronounce / life, love, strength. Remembered how we cleared / that eternal, accursed glacier / from the city streets — and an old man / stamped his foot...»
«He did not return, even after his death, to / That ancient city he was rooted in. / Going away, he did not pause for breath / Nor look back. My song is for him. / Torches, night, a last embrace, / Fate, a wild howl, at his threshold. / Out of hell he sent her his curse / And in heaven ...»