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.
«The music clamoured in the garden / With such inexpressible sorrow. / Freshly and sharply with the scent of sea / Smelled the oysters on ice. He said to me: "I am a loyal friend!" / And touched my dress. / So unlike an embrace / Is the touch of these hands. Cats or birds are petted tha...»
«All of us are are revellers here, whores, / How mirthless it is for us to be together! / On the walls, flowers and birds / languish in clouds. You are smoking a black pipe, / So strange are the wisps over it. / I put on a tight dress, / To look even slimmer. Forever forgotten windows: ...»
«A boy said to me: "How painful it is!" / And it’s a great pity with him. / Just a short while ago he was content, / Having only heard about sorrow. And now he knows all of it, no less / Than you, wise and old, do. / Dimmed and, it seems, already became / So the pupils of blinding eyes...»
«Dying, I pine over immortality. / Low is the cloud of dusty mist. / Least let it be the naked red devils, / Least let it be a vat of rank tar. Crawl on to me, beguile, / Ye threats from crumbling books. / Only leave me my memory, / Only the memory at the last moment. So that in the har...»