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!..
«I am bored with perpetual verbiage on all that is fine and gracious; / All these chats only make me feel weary and yawn... / Leaving the pedants I run to converse with you, dear friend; / I know that these eyes of yours, the wise dark black eyes, / Have more beauty in them than hundreds of f...»
«I fell in love with you one amber day / When, born in azure glow / From every twig, its thanks to say, / Warm languor trickling would flow. White as hop blooms, lake waves foamed and rolled, / So white their bodies fair. / The laughing Lel the love-god pulled / The sunbeams of black hai...»
«Oh, how I loved you, land that bore me, / My Russia, freedom’s motherland, / When under whip you languished sorely, / Stayed silent did your people grand. Your faith was wild and quite unseeing, / For resurrection long your wait! / And now that prison’s gates are freeing, / I see yo...»
«No more Europe, no more America. / The end of Tsarskoye, of Moscow, too. / A fit of nuclear hysteria – / life atomized into a radiant blue. Transparent, all-forgiving haze will stretch / over the seas. And he who could have done / something yet chose not to, will be left / in the expa...»