The more the autumn wind is wicked
And the moon desperate, —
The merrier we, vagrants, get
With a bottle of wine.
We wandered the whole day through
The field, with a sleuth and a rifle…
We are comrades — nothing more —
Unacknowledging sorrow.
What is love? Rapture, lips,
The fervour of understatement…!
Moderately gentle, moderately rough,
You know how to be with me.
You smoke a Finnish pipe
And follow the wisp…
Narrowing your mocking eye,
Turning on your stomach!..
What is love? A smouldering match, —
Better things can be found:
Between desire and habit
There are paths of bliss.
Чем осенний ветер злее
И отчаянней луна, —
Нам, бродягам, веселее
За бутылкою вина.
Целый день блуждали в поле
Мы с собакой и ружьем...
Мы товарищи — не боле —
Но тоски не признаем.
Что любовь? Восторги, губы,
Недосказанности зной... !
В меру нежным, в меру грубым
Ты умеешь быть со мной.
Трубку финскую ты куришь
И следишь, как дым плывет...
Глаз насмешливый прищуришь,
Повернувшись на живот!..
Что любовь? дотлеет спичкой, —
Можно лучшее найти:
Между страстью и привычкой
Есть блаженные пути.
«Aya Sophia — wondrous building planted / For God to judge the peoples and the kings! / Your dome, said one who saw it once, enchanted, / Suspended seems to be by heaven’s strings. And all the ages ape Justinian’s pattern, / Who, when desiring others’ gods to loot / Was granted by ...»
«I’ve returned to my city, with tears too well versed, / And with veins and with childhood’s glands ready to burst. You’ve returned here — with haste you have swallowed some draughts / Of the fish oil that fuels the river’s light’s shafts! So December day sooner acknowledge my frien...»
«Today is a drear day, / Grasshoppers they don’t fret, / Escarpment it hangs grey, / Gloomy as coffin’s plate. The hissing of darts’ flight / and squawk of astute crows… / I’m frightened of dreams’ night, / the moment it soon goes. Oh, capture the fleet tide, / dismantle t...»
«Despise stars’ leaden chain / Do I, their dullard’s fire. / Greet I old rage insane – / Turret’s protruding spire. Boulder, become as mesh, / Gossamer’s dainty web, / Firmament’s empty chest / Pierce with thin needle’s stab Fate will me soon have caught – / Sweeping I...»