In my comfortable carriage, buoyed by its ellipsychic bearings,
I love to visit at golden midday the lady's club for tea time,
Where women so deliciously gossip about social trash and quarrels,
Where the foolish rightfully are unfoolish, the wise always stupid.
Oh all you fashionable subjects, from you my sorrow will unfurl.
Trembling lips with irony quiver like jelly made of wild strawberries.
"The natives look just like pineapples and pineapples resemble natives."
The Creole woman's quips are witty, recalling her exotic landscapes.
The mayor's wife begins yawning, leaning over the silent piano,
Looks out the window where fermenting July sensuously stumbles.
Around us fan the golden cobwebs, of spleen's lazy tribes a symbol.
Having thus compared myself, isn't this why I love the Lady's Club?
Я в комфортабельной карете, на эллипсических рессорах,
Люблю заехать в златополдень на чашку чая в женоклуб,
Где вкусно сплетничают дамы о светских дрязгах и о ссорах,
Где глупый вправе слыть не глупым, но умный непременно глуп...
О, фешенебельные темы! от вас тоска моя развеется!
Трепещут губы иронично, как земляничное желе...
«Индейцы — точно ананасы, и ананасы — как индейцы...»
Острит креолка, вспоминая о экзотической земле.
Градоначальница зевает, облокотясь на пианино,
И смотрит в окна, где истомно бредет хмелеющий Июль.
Вкруг золотеет паутина, как символ ленных пленов сплина,
И я, сравнив себя со всеми, люблю клуб дам не потому ль?..
«Futile gift, so unexpected — / Life, why were you brought to me? / Rather, why are you subjected / To a brutal penalty? What unfriendly power brought me / Into being from nothingness, / Filled my soul with passion, wrought me / Doubts and qualms and faithlessness? No ambitions stand ...»
«Life, the gift so idle and random, / Why 're you given to me at all? / Or, else, why must you abandon / Me, condemned to deadly call? What cruel force has called me, raising / From nonentity to light, / Filled my soul with passion blazing, / Stirred with doubt my eager mind?.. Void's m...»
«Based on pure chance, a useless gift, / A life — why was it given to me? / And why did furtive fate so swift / My life to end in death decree? What power hostile in intent / Called me from Lethe’s mephitism, / Made my soul's essence passion-bent, / But roiled my mind with skeptici...»
«They run like a throng of gypsies, / chasing after the long-fingered Paganini, / one with a Czech sneeze, another with a Polish dance, / and still another with a Hungarian refrain. Comfort me with your playing, / proud little prodigy / whose sound is broad as the Yenisey, / little Polis...»