I know the price of my poems.
I’m sorry for them, that’s all.
But the glory of the verse of others
I experience as betrayal.
Through digressions, repetitions,
Without colours and almost without words,
One single vision,
Like the moon through the clouds.
Now it shows, now it’s gone,
Now it fogs up slightly
And sheds quiet light
And brings inevitable reconciliation
With the tongue’s helplessness.
Стихам своим я знаю цену.
Мне жаль их, только и всего.
Но ощущаю как измену
Иных поэзий торжество.
Сквозь умаленья, повторенья,
Без красок и почти без слов,
Одно, единое виденье,
Как месяц из - за облаков,
То промелькнет, то исчезает,
То затуманится слегка, —
И тихим светом озаряет,
И непреложно примиряет
С беспомощностью языка.
«At night, as was our wont, we sought the café. Near, / Paris aglow and drunken in its rapture swayed. / I gaze upon your face; I strive from year to year / To pierce the veil and seek the scars new wounds have made. And like a rugged sailor you to me appear, / Who in those goodly times Mag...»
«Birds of wrath with their plumage of fire all bedight / Over heaven's white portals were borne in their flight; / On the marble the fiery refulgences flared. / Then swiftly o'er ocean the wanderers fared. But upon the pure marble, the threshold unstained, / There was something unwonted that...»
«Electrical moons are twinkling / On curving and delicate bands; / The telegraph wires are tinkling / In tender, invisible hands. The clocks with their amber faces / By magic are lit o'er the crowd; / Of stillness the cooling traces / The thirst-ridden pavement enshroud. 'Neath a net th...»
«— Stonehewer, stonehewer, whitely arrayed, / What art thou building? For whom? / — Ho, do not baulk us intent on our trade, — / From our building a prison will loom. — Stonehewer, stonehewer, trowel in hand, / Who then will sob in these walls? / — Not you, nor your brother, rich...»