Innokenty Annensky
To another

I fell in love with your insane impulse, but
It is impossible to be you and I all at once,
And having revealed the hieroglyphics of prophetic
Dreams, I write the patterned phrase legibly.

Fear is reflected ornamentally there, and
How anguish has crumpled the heart’s paper!
But along the lines, like a phantom at the
Feasts, a shadow moves so artificially and inertly.

Your reveries are Maenads in the night, and the
Lunar whirlwind in a sparkling sweep will fling
Up waves of tresses across their shoulders...
My best dream is Andromache at the spinning-wheel.

On her head is a quaint, high coiffure,
Covered coquettishly with a kerchief,
And still my austere pencil has nowhere
Yielded its harmonies to the full stops.

You are all fire. And beyond the bonfire you are
Pure. You will reduce to ashes, but will not leave
Marks, and you are a god there, where I am only a
Moralist, a useless guest, awkward and inarticulate.

Years will pass... perhaps months...
Or even days, and we shall leave the road:
You, in the petals of a fragrant wreath;
I, simply pushed on to a hearse.

In spite of envious fate and
Wretchedlyfaint-hearted poverty,
You will leave a monument behind you,
Immovable, though sweetly airy...

The day of my dream will pass without a trace...
.  .  .  .  .
How to know? But what if, with a soul more lively
Than the sea, another poet will love her shadow
In the untouched, triumphant headdress?..

Will love, and recognize, and understand,
And seeing that the shadow has awakened
And is breathing, will bless her silent
Flight among people who do not hear?..

Let it be only that in the wheeling of existence it
Should not tum out so, that this enamored spirit,
My brother and magician, should not prove to be I,
Only slightly renewed in insignificance...

Translated by R. H. Morrison