To our fortune or misfortune,
Simple is the truth:
One shall not revisit porches
Left behind in youth.
Even if we find our mecca
Perfectly alright,
We won't hear the sought-for echo,
Neither you nor I.
I would travels to the former
Once for all forbid.
And, my brother, do not stir me,
Let me rest a bit.
Lest - who'd hinder me? — like lightning
I would take a dive
On a felt-boot into nineteen
Forty four or five.
In that year, I have an inkling,
There, where — holy my! —
Will remain my mom unwrinkled,
And my dad alive.
По несчастью или к счастью,
Истина проста:
Никогда не возвращайся
В прежние места.
Даже если пепелище
Выглядит вполне,
Не найти того, что ищем,
Ни тебе, ни мне.
Путешествие в обратно
Я бы запретил,
Я прошу тебя, как брата,
Душу не мути.
А не то рвану по следу —
Кто меня вернет? —
И на валенках уеду
В сорок пятый год.
В сорок пятом угадаю,
Там, где — боже мой! —
Будет мама молодая
И отец живой.
«Sleep on a Summer’s Night / (Five Verses) 5 Drink and write, with a kerosene lamp, / Watching for patrols’ revving motors / In the street, with beer mug in hand / As you sip the July night away. The green-eyed thirsty giant! / Pickles spill over the poplar-wood table, / Petty hood...»
«Days spread out with distinct somberness. / The disconsolate brook flows along / In front of my entry hall porch door / Outside my window’s unblocked view. Outside the fence along the road / The public garden flows from its bank. / Sprawling down, like beasts from a lair, / Tumultuous...»
«Fame is unsightly, when one is alive. / It does nothing to raise one up. / One must not establish archives / Nor tremble over one’s manuscripts. The aim of creation — self-reflection, / Not hoopla, not grand success. / To be a parable on any old tongue / Is infamy and nothingness. ...»
«It is not seemly to be famous: / Celebrity does not exalt; / There is no need to hoard your writings / And to preserve them in a vault. / / To give your all-this is creation, / And not-to deafen and eclipse. / How shameful, when you have no meaning, / To be on everybody's lips! / ...»