After plodding year after year
through towns in an alien land,
we have ground enough to despair —
and despair is where we must end.
For despair is our final refuge —
as if, midwinter, we had come
from Vespers in a nearby church,
through Russian snow, to our home.
За столько лет такого маянья
По городам чужой земли
Есть от чего прийти в отчаянье,
И мы в отчаянье пришли.
— В отчаянье, в приют последний,
Как будто мы пришли зимой
С вечерни в церковке соседней,
По снегу русскому, домой.
«It pleases me that I am not your hurt, / It pleases me that you are not my illness, / That as we step upon the heavy Earth, / Its solidness shall never drift beneath us. / It pleases me that I don’t have to flirt, / That I can be relaxed and wordplay-needless, / In suffocating blush no...»
«Hands — in the dips / Of all resold, repledged, repossessed! / It’s just the lips, / The hands I mustn’t confuse with the rest! All those vain / Petty things that steal me from sanity. / Hands to heaven, / Friend, here I plead to my own memory! My poetry / (The dumping ground o...»
«Striking clock welcomes autumn to town: / This year notably heavy and hard, / Fallen fruit hits the ground, and the count / Is the number of fruit in the yard. With this music, important and clear, / Who repeats that the clock must still go? / The old garden performs with no fear / Loo...»
«Night, street, apothecary, lamppost, / Dim light, its mindless vanity. / Live for a century, or almost, — / It will be so. No getaway. Or die — it all will come full circle, / The motion that you will repeat: / Canal, night, rippling icy water, / Lamppost, apothecary, street.»