Theyre «red» today, and theyre «white» tomorrow —
Ah, no tapestry! No flowers, this!
Tiresome to me to the point of nausea,
Small people hideous and turned to beasts.
Lowly today and tomorrow lowly,
Today the thieves and tomorrow too.
Vile scoundrels now and vile scoundrels formerly,
Will provoke any revolt for you.
Ideas foolish, dreams, all in vanity,
That in their theory is way to god.
They all are colorless in their entity —
Today theyre «white» and tomorrow «red»!
Сегодня «красные», а завтра «белые» —
Ах, не материи! ах, не цветы!
Людишки гнусные и озверелые,
Мне надоевшие до тошноты.
Сегодня пошлые и завтра пошлые,
Сегодня жулики и завтра те ж,
Они, бывалые, пройдохи дошлые,
Вам спровоцируют любой мятеж.
Идеи вздорные, мечты напрасные,
Что в «их» теориях — путь к Божеству?
Сегодня «белые», а завтра «красные» —
Они бесцветные по существу.
«What’s it like with another woman — / Simpler? — a flash of the oar! — / Did the memory of me / soon fade off-shore, like the beach of a floating island, / (in the sky — not in the sea!) / Souls, souls! You’ll be sisters, / not lovers — that’s what you’ll be! What’s...»
«Dis-tances: miles, versts... / They dis-pelled us until we dis-persed, / So we would act as we were told / In two corners of the world. Dis-tances: versts, spaces… / They dislocated us, they displaced us, / They disjoint us, crucified on display, / And observed there, to their dismay,...»
«In the cold season, in a locality accustomed to heat more than / to cold, to horizontality more than to a mountain, / a child was born in a cave in order to save the world; / it blew as only in deserts in winter it blows, athwart. To Him, all things seemed enormous: His mother’s breast, the...»
«My dear Telemachus, / The Trojan War / is over now; I don’t recall who won it. / The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave / so many dead so far from their own homeland. / But still, my homeward way has proved too long. / While w...»