Innokenty Annensky
The Anguish of a Mirage

They faded, the last bands of reddish,
Like whispers of prayers in night,
O tale, such seductive and maddish,
What else do you want of this heart?

Are not, beyond measure and count,
So hard in the snows my ways?
Aren’t gray empty spaces around?
Isn’t husky the ring of the bells?

And why, every minute and instant,
My heart is divided in two?
I know that she is in distance,
But feel her right near me, too.

Here they are, the snowy clouds,
I can’t take my eyes from all that:
Right now, shall merge our routs
In snows, so white and so dead.

Right now will be silently bound
And newly unbound our sleighs.
We’ll hear the bell’s common sound
In an instant of sadness and pains…

We’d heard… But we’ll not any more
Have meeting in this hazy night…
In the circle of anguish and woe
I wander on my path of blight…

They faded, the last bands of reddish,
Like whispers of prayers in night,
O tale, such seductive and maddish,
What else do you want of this heart?

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver