A boiling Waterfall, once, dashing from the rock,
Addressed to a salubrious Spring below with a talk:
"In grass you're hardly seen, your murmur is not loud,
So how you succeed attracting this huge crowd?
Why do they come to you? I'don't know what to think."
"For treatment", quietly said the Spring.
Кипящий Водопад, свергаяся со скал,
Целебному ключу с надменностью сказал
(Который под горой едва лишь был приметен,
Но силой славился лечебною своей):
«Не странно ль это? Ты так мал, водой так беден,
А у тебя всегда премножество гостей?
Не мудрено, коль мне приходит кто дивиться;
К тебе зачем идут?» — «Лечиться»,
Смиренно прожурчал Ручей.
«Pavillions spread over the square, / The maple leaves kiss the stars. / It's night — a celebration there, / Merriment and festivity in the park. / But when a pyrotechnist hurls / A silvery light from tree-tops to sky, / Poet, don't put your trust / In the night's fantastic bursts. /...»
«Behind an old house, a forest, / In front, a field of oats, / In the sky, a cloud, a silver sphere, / Unprecedented beauty boasts. / With edges vaguely lilac-tinted, / The center threatening and bright... / A wing of a wounded swan somewhere / Drifts slowly out of sight. / And down b...»
«Poets, you should love painting! / For it alone / Can portray on canvas / Signs of an unsettled soul. Remember how Struiskaya, / Draped in satin, looked at us / Out of Rokotov's portrait / From the depths of the past? Her eyes were two clouds, / Half-smiling, half-weeping, / Like t...»
«He used to come here till he donned gold braid, / a good topcoat on, self-controlled, stoop-shouldered. / Arresting these cafe habitues – / he started snuffing out world culture somewhat later – / seemed sweet revenge (on Time, that is, not them) / for all the lack of cash, the sneer...»