Innokenty Annensky
To her who travels with me

How cleanly the skies are extinguished.
With what delicate caprice
The distant forests recede to those
Heights we knew as azure...

In your eyes there is no reproach:
Like a memory you meet the
Burning - out of sunset clouds
And the bluish-pink reflection.

But I do not conquer my anguish:
In the wastes of the burnt-out sky
I see the lifeless daybreak
From a never-setting Erebus.

Let us depart... I can no longer
Stand the congealing of these clear-cut
Lines and this pasteboard-blue canopy...
Let there be sun or night!..

Translated by R. H. Morrison