O you the ancient rhymes and rhythms,
Seized on by many poets,
The banal, cheap, and puny ones,
Cliches overcooked and boiled!
You sound with the guitar strings,
With rhythms and rhyme impoverished,
Than all new things more beautiful
To my simplistic soul!
You were under Derzhavin,
You were under Nekrasov
You were under Nikitin,
And under Tolstoy too!
Oh you — just like an avalanche!
And though you were discarded,
And though new ones are written —
You burst into my book!
I greet you, my dear loyal ones,
The fully tried and tested ones,
The musical and flowerful
And most beloved by me!
Exemplary companions
You dear ones, you tender ones,
The happy and the sorrowful
The nightingale-like rhythms!
О вы, размеры старые,
Захватанные многими,
Банальные, дешёвые,
Готовые клише!
Звучащие гитарою,
И с рифмами убогими —
Прекраснее, чем новые,
Простой моей душе!
Вы были при Державине,
Вы были при Некрасове,
Вы были при Никитине,
Вы были при Толстом!
О вы — подобны ла́вине!
И как вас не выбрасывай,
Что новое не вытяни, —
Вы проситесь в мой том.
Приветствую вас, верные
Испытанно-надёжные,
Округло-музыкальные,
Любимые мои!
О вы — друзья примерные,
Вы, милые, вы, нежные
Весёлые, печальные,
Размеры — соловьи!
«A swarm of dust starting from the horizon / And pouring out across Sunday, everywhere, / Like a shower breaking through a bedroom window, / Did not yet reach the house. It propelled everything towards the dinner hour / While the third rain was occurring, / Like a whirlpool flinging a bicy...»
«O childhood! Scoop ladle of heart’s profundity! / O native groves and forests where / Confidence in self was firmly planted, / My inspirer, my overseer! What tears have dried themselves on window panes! / What wasps devoured the festering roses! / How often chaotic turmoil fades away / ...»
«Could I forget them? Kinfolk, / The seas? Caress a rail ticket? / For an orgy of the senses — a trap? / In a tempest — the crowd, a horde? A window, a compartment, provisions? / To get off somewhere? Unload somewhere? Settle down? / I relish the torment. — These scars! / Your lion...»
«So it begins. Year two rushes / From nurse into the darkness of melodies, / It whistles, it chirps, — then words / Begin around the third year. Thus does understanding begin. / And in the start-up noise of the turbine / It seems, that mother — is not mother. / You’re — not you, ...»