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.
«I remain with what was not fully said, / With what was not fully sung, not played out, / Not written to the end, in a secret society, / In the quiet fellowship of the unsuccessful, / Who lived in rustling pages / And now talk in whispers. / They even forewarned us in youth, / But we di...»
«Eagles and butterflies (and some other things) / Still live. Let's leave them in peace. / And clouds. Don't disturb them either. / Let there be you and I, two umbrellas and the rain. / And if everything gets broken, there'll be nothing, / And people have broken so much inside.»
«I love or I don't — despair comes easily to me: / Though I may never be yours, / Nonetheless there's such tenderness at times / In your eyes, as though I am loved. Not by me you'll live, not by me you'll suffer, / And I will pass like the shadow of clouds; / But you will never forget me...»
«Breaks in round bays, and shingle, and blue, / and a slow sail continued by a cloud — / I hardly knew you; I've been torn from you: / longer than organ fugues — the sea's bitter grasses, / fake tresses — and their long lie stinks, / my head swims with iron tenderness, / the rust ...»