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...
___
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.
«And to you, my first vagary, / I said goodbye. The east was turning blue, / Though I didn’t know what you meant, / You said, simply: "I’ll not forget." Other faces appear and vanish, / Dear today, and tomorrow, done. / Why is at this page alone, / The corner is turned down? Forever...»
«I pray to the ray from the window-pane — / It’s pale, thin, and straight. / All morning I was silent, / My heart — split in two. / The copper of my wash-basin / Is green with verdigris, / But sunlight plays there, / How joyously. / So simple it is, so innocent, / In evening q...»
«He loved three things, alive: / White peacocks, songs at eve, / And antique maps of America. / Hated when children cried, / And raspberry jam with tea, / And feminine hysteria. / ...And he had married me.»
«My feather brushed the carriage roof. / I was gazing into his eyes. / The pain, in my heart, I failed to know, / Caused by my own sighs. The evening breathless, heavily-chained / Under a heavenly cloud-bank, / As in the Bois de Boulogne, stained, / In some old album, with Indian ink. S...»