I don’t know, I can’t explain...
Do I love or do I die?
Is it a dream or is it Verlaine?
Is it spell or a prison cell?
Either the torment of the ideal
Or the beauty’s torment
Is spilled in the whole world
From a broken goblet.
The dream might be wrong as well
Whether she is the one,
In the light of the ideal
The dream might guess in vain
Is it spell or a prison cell?
Is it a dream or is it Verlaine?
But the roses of my cell
Breathed the scent to my lips,
And my dream will sing again
To the music of Verlaine.
Не могу понять, не знаю…
Это сон или Верлен?..
Я люблю иль умираю?
Это чары или плен?
Из разбитого фиала
Всюду в мире разлита
Или мука идеала,
Или муки красота.
Пусть мечта не угадала,
Та она или не та,
Перед светом идеала,
Пусть мечта не угадала,
Это сон или Верлен?
Это чары или плен?
Но дохнули розы плена
На замолкшие уста,
И под музыку Верлена
Будет петь моя мечта.
«An even, hazy hum runs through the glade, / The rustling leaves to laze and drowse incline . . . / The roosters faraway in sun-specked shade, / Their vernal tidings sing, in crows benign. A quiet, hazy hum runs through the glade . . . / To succor me and send my soul repose, / I lie midst ...»
«Embroidered all in stars, my sail / Stands tall and white, both taut and frail; / Between the stars there glows the Face / Of Mother Mary, full of grace. What do I care if shores and sphere / Are fading, soon to disappear! / My soul’s replete, my soul’s austere, / And horns of fresh...»
«A lone white sail that glistens, gleams, / On seascape haze cerulean blue. / What distant realms attract his dreams? / In dear homeland what’s left to rue? The billows surge, the winds are shrieking, / The creaking mast writhes in distress, / Alas, not happiness he’s seeking, / Nor ...»
«(Mosaic in a Moscow Cathedral) Thy face flushed red ‘gainst Batu’s fires, / That gruesome glower in eyes gone dead, / The rust-gold wings where faith respires / In sacred trepidation spread. Before thy stare in the Time of the Dread / Passed fools in skufia, tattered, worn, / Forever...»