At the gates of Zion, over Kedron,
There is a windswept hillock;
And where the wall gives temporary shade,
I happened to sit down beside a leper,
Who was eating toxic seeds.
His stench was indescribable.
The fool was poisoning himself.
But he would smile, for all that,
Looking blissfully around
And muttering: “Praise be to Allah!”
Merciful God, wherefore did you give us
Feelings, thoughts, and cares,
A thirst for action and amusement?
Happy are the cripples and the idiots,
And happiest of all — the leper!
У ворот Сиона, над Кедроном,
На бугре, ветрами обожжённом,
Там, где тень бывает от стены,
Сел я как-то рядом с прокажённым,
Евшим зерна спелой белены.
Он дышал невыразимым смрадом,
Он, безумный, отравлялся ядом,
А меж тем, с улыбкой на губах,
Поводил кругом блаженным взглядом,
Бормоча: «Благословен аллах!»
Боже милосердный, для чего ты
Дал нам страсти, думы и заботы,
Жажду дела, славы и утех?
Радостны калеки, идиоты,
Прокаженный радостнее всех.
«Armed with wasp-vision, with the vision of wasps / that suck, suck, suck the earth's axis, / I'm filled by the whole deep vein of my life / and hold it here in my heart and in vain. And I don't draw, don't sing, / don't draw a black-voiced bow over strings: / I only drink, drink, drink in...»
«Today is the name day of Our Lady of Smolensk, / Dark blue incense drifts over the grass, / And the flowing of the Requiem / Is no longer sorrowful, but radiant. / And the rosy little widows lead / Their boys and girls to the cemetery / To visit father’s grave. / But the grave...»
«Who knows what such fame is like! / At what price did he buy the right, / The possibility or the paradise / To joke about it all so wisely and cunningly, / To be mysteriously silent, / And to call a foot a “footsie”?»
«I do not deserve this praise, rather, / And Sappho doesn’t matter in that, / I know the reason another, / But nothing of it can be read. / Let somebody save self by running, / And others — by nods from their "bliss". / These poems were all underlying / With text, that’s like look...»