My crystal is magic thrice over:
Beneath the facet’s first base
Are embraces thrown open in torment,
The flame of a bonfire is scattered.
But you will not see the bonfire
Again, if you just move the base —
Pale arms are outstretched there
And embrace empty gloom...
If you touch the last base there are
Neither closed nor open arms...
But there is no more triumphant rainbow
Than the rainbow of torments ended!..
Хрусталь мой волшебен трикраты:
Под первым устоем ребра —
Там руки с мученьем разжаты,
Раскидано пламя костра.
Но вновь не увидишь костер ты,
Едва передвинешь устой —
Там бледные руки простерты
И мрак обнимают пустой.
Нажмешь ли устой ты последний —
Ни сжатых, ни рознятых рук,
Но радуги нету победней,
Чем радуга конченных мук!..
«So Hagar sits in obloquy / And gushing piteously / The spring pours out a threnody: / Be-er la-chai ro-yi. Those lands belong to Abraham, / But this expanse – to none: / In front of her, the wilderness / To Shur itself does run. Despair, despair instinctual! / In her Egyptian eyes,...»
«Not for safe-keeping for awhile, – / For the altar, not donation, – / For the fire, the fire, its oblation / Rapt Israel brought in times gone by! And pleasing to Jehovah’s nostrils / Was smoke from sacrificial fires, / Because a consecrated offering / In truth, can not be taken b...»
«Don’t seduce me into captivity, / Don’t entice me with hearth and home, / Don’t immure me living and breathing / Inside four walls. There’s no chamber for which a poet / Would exchange her homelessness, – / That’s why the cuckoo cuckoos / That she hasn’t got a nest.»
«Voice Enormous city. Wind. Evening. / Lights flicker in the dark, / And you, madman, are off in search of / A soul mate in each passerby. / Calm down, stop acting crazy, poet, / Resign yourself to orphan-hood / And do not pester with your cries / The people there who pass you by. Poe...»