How nice to walk the quay at night! No fuss.
We stroll and we are silent, both of us.
We see the Seine, a tree, and there’s the rising stone
Of a cathedral, and clouds...
We’ll postpone
Our talking till tomorrow, later, aye.
Till day after tomorrow,
till we die.
По набережной ночью мы идем.
Как хорошо — идем, молчим вдвоем.
И видим Сену, дерево, собор
И облака…
А этот разговор
На завтра мы отложим, на потом,
На после-завтра…
На когда умрем.
«From this exhausting weakness / Nowhere to go! Nowhere to go! / Which flows around my heart / Like water! Like water! Was it really written — (and by whom?) — / In the heavens, / That two demons, hope and fear, / Should eat into my soul? I won't be saved, I have been struggling / ...»
«All my "I" swings like a pendulum, / And its sweep is very wide. / It sways, slides, alternates: / Now it's hope, now it's fear. From knowing, from not knowing, from flickering / My flesh is dying. / Can you condemn it, O Lord!, / This painful, insane swaying?...»
«All days are fractured as though by crime, / The passage of hoary time grows rusty, / My body's fettered with rigidity, / My heart oppressed and my blood cold as ice. But there comes lightning: everything can change / In a prophetic dream or wide awake. / The sword of the Archangel touche...»
«Everyone has his special magic words, / And on the surface they mean nothing, / But when they are recalled, they flash and slip right by / And yet our heart begins to laugh and cry. I don't like to repeat them, for I guard / Them from myself, forgetting them on purpose. / But I will meet ...»