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!
«I knew that Anguish would / Return and stay with me. / It will tinkle and shut / With the watchmaker’s door. He who has opened the door to it / Will link and again unlink the / Palpitation of the steel heart / With the chirring of the wings... Cicadas impatiently beat with / Eager ...»
«For the time being it is still granted to us, while / Living, to pine in an anguish of increasing dread, / But already it is decreed that hearts shall deceive / Each other and lie to themselves while growing cold; For the time being, clinging to the frozen / Window, the Shadow of Infirmity ...»
«When, setting the blue on fire, / The raging purple day grows, / How often I invoke the twilight. / The cold twilight of amethysts. But let no blazing rays burn / The amethyst’s facets; may / Only a candle’s gleam flow / There liquidly and ardently. And, turning lilac and crumbling...»
«The blue-gray sunset drew / Near, the air was tender and / Heady, and the misted garden / Somehow was specially green. And affirming the Unseen / One In clouds of hidden sadness. / Trumpets were sounding so / Softly in the rain-filled air. Suddenly, like a clear summons, / Something ...»