I imagine everything wrapped in a beatific mist:
Statues, arches, gardens, flowerbeds.
The dark waves of the lovely river...
Once the memories start to flow,
it means ... But perhaps all this is nonsense.
Like a wild beast from its lair, crouching,
Sick, I crawl into the cold of Paris...
"Poor Folk."1 Oh, how tautologous!
Who said? Was it I perhaps...
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1. The title of Dostoevsky's first novel, a poignant depiction of Russian poverty in St. Petersburg.
Все представляю в блаженном тумане я:
Статуи, арки, сады, цветники.
Темные волны прекрасной реки...
Раз начинаются воспоминания,
Значит... А может быть, все пустяки.
...Вот вылезаю, как зверь, из берлоги я,
В холод Парижа, сутулый, больной...
«Бедные люди» — пример тавтологии,
Кем это сказано? Может быть, мной.
«Among worlds shone, amid glimmers, / A single star whose name I repeat.... / Not so that I may come to love it, / But because I am weary of the rest. And if I find doubt a burden, / I seek only from her an answer, / Not because she shines brightly / But because with her I need no light.»
«Dust fills the nostrils — the horses neigh. / Acacias molt over the firewood stacks. / In the wind the red hemp is asway. / The sun stands in the middle of the backyard, / The lunch-break arrives, having gnawed / its way through the growling soot of the day. I'm home, til dusk. All is q...»
«I cannot remember — at just which nightstop / the itch of future life has crawled through me. / The world did shudder. / A star tripped on its run, / and fell into a blue-enameled basin. / I reached for it... But, it has washed away, / between my fingers — a red-scaled ide. / The ...»
«Here I am back again in this land. / I pass by / Again under the young planetrees, / Again, children run amid the parkbenches, / Again, the sea lies covered in the smoke of ships... / Here I am, a volunteer, in epaulets, / Edged in colored piping, - / Here I am, a warrior, the hero of ...»