Boiling up over the years,
A fury that drives on crazy,
Fury with the champions of freedom,
Fury with the adherents of the yoke,
Fury with the dregs and the toffs —
Different-colored specimens
Of the same «worldly wisdom»,
With the world and with my native land.
Fury? Indifference rather,
Toward life, eternity, fate.
Something catlike or birdlike
Which quite put out
The paragons of propriety,
Well-behaved A and B,
Seated on a chimney.
Накипевшая за годы
Злость, сводящая с ума,
Злость к поборникам свободы,
Злость к ревнителям ярма,
Злость к хамью и джентльменам —
Разномастным специменам
Той же «мудрости земной»,
К миру и стране родной.
Злость? Вернее, безразличье
К жизни, к вечности, к судьбе.
Нечто кошкино иль птичье,
Отчего не по себе
Верным рыцарям приличья,
Благонравным А и Б,
Что уселись на трубе.
«The sun went strolling in the sky / When suddenly a cloud came by. / Bunny took a look outside. / “Oh, how dark it is!” he cried. And the magpies on the farm / Chattered loudly in alarm. / They hopped about the hills and plains / And shouted to the storks and cranes: / “L...»
«Long the Tsar sat lonely, brooding. / But he, too, was only human. / Tears for one sad year he shed... / And another woman wed. / She (if one be strictly truthful) / Was a born Tsaritsa — youthful, / Slim, tall, fair to look upon, / Clever, witty — and so on. / But sh...»
«The roads to the past have long been closed, / and what is the past to me now? / What is there? Bloody slabs, / or a bricked up door, / or an echo that still could not / keep quiet, although I ask so… / The same thing happened with the echo / as with what I carry in my heart.»
«Past’s path long ago was barricaded, / Now I wonder, what for me is left? / Only grave slabs where the blood has faded / Or a crumbling doorway’s bricked up cleft, / Or an echo that cannot but tarry / Even though I plead with it to stop… / Like the one that in my heart I carry / ...»