Sonnet
I am set up for thirty years so as to
Live painfully breaking up the rays
From ghostly planets into “yes” and
“No,” into “ah!” and “baa.”
So as to live worrying and grieving
Over what is already not there...
And I should certainly be a poet
If I could invent myself.
In work there are perhaps some blunders,
Or is there a trick in the mechanism?
But my immortal spirit would be not spirit
Now — it would be God... When it was not
“Seize it!” and not “Soho!” and not
“All gone now” after “Sore! Sore!”
Сонет
Я завожусь на тридцать лет,
Чтоб жить, мучительно дробя
Лучи от призрачных планет
На «да» и «нет», на «ах!» и «бя»,
Чтоб жить, волнуясь и скорбя
Над тем, чего, гляди, и нет…
И был бы, верно, я поэт,
Когда бы выдумал себя.
В работе ль там не без прорух,
Иль в механизме есть подвох,
Но был бы мой свободный дух —
Теперь не дух, я был бы Бог…
Когда б не пиль да не тубо,
Да не тю-тю после бо-бо!..
«Do I need excuses / For divine mismatching? — / Poetry and music / Aren't cure-all magic. And why hum insanely / Tunes and verses hopeless? / Having nothing saintly / Feels more fun and homeless. And our gain is pretty / Minuscule and fleeting — / Only heartfelt pity, / So th...»
«T. O.-T. My evening, silver-feathered, / All-consecrating light! / As if no longer present, / I turn to you my sight – With gratefulness: for every / Revitalizing breath, / That in my final craving / You granted to my breast, For every elevation / Of your becalming hand, / For a...»
«Our rendezvous, their each and every moment, / we celebrated as a holy omen, / Epiphany for just the two of us. / As daring as a wing, more light than dust, / you, down the stairway, like a dizzy torrent / ran skipping treads, and navigated past / the veil of lilac to the territory / u...»
«You were sleeping, today, while I was looking about us / into the shadows, a horseman in patrol. / It was then I understood exactly how late it was: / how death is waiting on stage, and how everything passes, / and though it looks innocent to scribble these lines / poetry is no longer priv...»