The smokey blotches of the neighbours’ windows,
and windswept roses bending, drawing breath —
if I could think that life is but a dream,
that we cannot help waking after death.
To wait in heaven — heaven is so blue —
to wait in that cool bliss without a care.
And then, never to part with you.
With you for ever. Do you see? For ever...
Дымные пятна соседних окон,
Розы под ветром вздыхают и гнутся.
Если б поверить, что жизнь — это сон,
Что после смерти нельзя не проснуться.
Будет в раю — рай совсем голубой —
Ждать так прохладно, блаженно-безпечно.
И никогда не расстаться с тобой!
Вечно с тобой. Понимаешь ли? Вечно...
«The bells again break the silence, / Wailing with remorse… / Only several streets divide us, / Only several words! A silver sickle lights the night, / The city sleeps this hour, / The falling snowflakes set alight / The stars upon your collar. Are the sores of the past still aching? ...»
«For Max Voloshin They’ll pay a visit to our place / Just when our eyes are free of pain, / Let pain appear, — they won’t remain: / The hearts of cats feel no disgrace! It’s funny, poet, wouldn’t you say, / How hard we try to make them tame. / They will not play the roles of sla...»
«My poems, written early, when I doubted / that I could ever play the poet’s part, / erupting, as though water from the fountain / or sparks from a petard, / and rushing as though little demons, senseless, / into the sanctuary, where incense spreads, / my poems about death and adolescen...»
«You, walking past me and racing / After charms that you’ll hardly attain, — / If you knew how much fire is wasted, / How much life is wasted in vain! And what flames, so courageously rash, / An occasional shade can evoke, / And how my heart was burnt into ash / By this useless gunpo...»