Aquarelle
An apple-tree in Spring shakes me, — to see it grow,
Its branches whitely weighted with unmelting snow.
So might a hunch-backed girl stand, beautiful and dumb,
As trembling, the tree stands, and strikes my genius numb...
It looks into the wide, pale shallows, mirror-clear,
Seeking to shed the dews that stain it like a tear;
And stilled with horror, groans like a rude, rusty cart,
Seeing the dismal hunch mocked by the pool's bright art.
When steely sleep alights upon the silent lake
For the bent apple-tree, as for a sick girl's sake,
I come to offer tenderness the boughs would miss,
I press upon the petal-perfumed tree a kiss.
Then trustingly, with tears, the tree confides her care
To me, and brushes with a touch my back-blown hair.
Her boughs encircle me, her little twigs enlace,
And I lift up my lips to kiss her flowering face.
Акварель
Перу И. И. Ясинского посвящаю
Весенней яблони, в нетающем снегу,
Без содрогания я видеть не могу:
Горбатой девушкой — прекрасной, но немой —
Трепещет дерево, туманя гений мой...
Как будто в зеркало — смотрясь в широкий плес,
Она старается смахнуть росинки слез,
И ужасается, и стонет, как арба,
Вняв отражению зловещего горба.
Когда на озеро слетает сон стальной,
Бываю с яблоней, как с девушкой больной,
И, полный нежности и ласковой тоски,
Благоуханные целую лепестки.
Тогда доверчиво, не сдерживая слез,
Она касается слегка моих волос,
Потом берет меня в ветвистое кольцо, —
И я целую ей цветущее лицо.
«Your fabulous enunciation — / Hot whistling of a bird of prey, / Create a true representation / Of silken eyelids, I dare say. "What" — and the head has fallen / "Why" — I am asking you / And far away the leaves are calling: / We live upon this planet too. So let them say that...»
«The essence of farewell I have extracted / From hatless laments of the sleepless night / As oxen chew, and waiting grows protracted, / And end of city vigil is in sight — / And I recall the rooster night with fear / When lost in doleful journey for too long / Into the void the tear-dre...»
«1 Upon Pieria's great stone cascades / The muses were conducting their first choir / And just like bees, the blind musicians made / Gifts of Ionian honey from their lyres. / From a young woman's convex forehead / Cold air blew in gusts like rays of sun / That the archipelago's tender co...»
«In crystal swampland there is such a violence! / Beyond, Sienian mountains stand sky-clad, / Gothic cathedrals of the rocks gone mad / Hang in the air, where there is fur and silence. From hanging staircases of kings and prophets / Organ descends, filled with the holy ghost, / Barking of ...»