To Petersburg, then Paris too
I find I’m carried by the ocean.
I see them, and I listen, through
Fog’s shroud and timbrel’s loud commotion —
With nightingales now shines the night,
Like melting snow, the stars have vanished
And souls — that can’t escape their plight —
With groaning disappear from sight,
With groaning they’re for ever banished.
Меня уносит океан
То к Петербургу, то к Парижу.
В ушах тимпан, в глазах туман,
Сквозь них я слушаю и вижу —
Сияет соловьями ночь,
И звезды, как снежинки, тают,
И души — им нельзя помочь —
Со стоном улетают прочь,
Со стоном в вечность улетают.
«To S. V. von Stein There is a love like smoke: if cramped, / It stupefies; give it freedom, and / It will be gone... To be like / Smoke, but eternally youthful... There is a love like shadow: by day it / Lies at your feet, it heeds you; at / Night it embraces you soundlessly... / To be...»
«I fell in love with your insane impulse, but / It is impossible to be you and I all at once, / And having revealed the hieroglyphics of prophetic / Dreams, I write the patterned phrase legibly. Fear is reflected ornamentally there, and / How anguish has crumpled the heart’s paper! / But...»
«Among their leaves long ago the tulips / Were filled with pink lassitude, but / The sound of a piano is passionately / Departing to the gloomy summit. And torment is there or triumph. / Revelation or enigma, but He is / No one’s, and you are his, and the / Consciousness of this is swe...»
«There are words whose breath is like a flower: / So tender and whitely disquieting; but / Among them there is nothing sadder or / Tenderer than you, impossible. Without knowing you, I had already loved / In you those sounds sunk into velvet: / The shining of graves appeared to me and. / ...»