My soul is borne out on the wind.
Through the opaqueness of her earthly case she glitters like a sword.
She is free; she rides her body as the whirlwind the storm.
She is free from the death of the flesh.
Her passage is brief as the lightning,
As the flash of the outgoing sea-gull,
Or the slipping frigate!
She is the juggler who raises the dead,
With whom the spirits speak.
The soul is beautiful! Proud in her beauty she laughs at life
And drinks deep of the day.
And she casts herself on the wing of the wind,
Breasting the uppermost height.
Душа откуда-то приносится Ветрами,
Чтоб жить, светясь в земных телах.
Она, свободная, как вихрь владеет нами,
В обманно-смертных наших снах.
Она как молния, она как буревестник,
Как ускользающий фрегат,
Как воскрешающий — отшедших в смерть — кудесник,
С которым духи говорят.
Душа — красивая, она смеётся с нами,
Она поёт на тёмном дне.
И как приносится, уносится с Ветрами,
Чтоб жить в безмерной вышине.
«We’ve done enough, we’ve said enough — / let’s sit in silence, without smiling; / low-lying clouds are shedding snow / and heaven’s light is slowly fading. The brittle willows rage and split / in an unspeakable pitched battle. / "Until tomorrow, then," I say. / "As for today, ...»
«At blazing noon, in Dagestan’s deep valley, / a bullet in my chest, dead still I lay, / as steam yet rose above my wound, I tallied / each drop of blood, as life now now seeped away. Alone I lay within a sandy hollow, / as jagged ledges teemed there, rising steep, / with sun-scorched pe...»
«We pronounced / the simplest, poorest words / as if they had never been said. / We were saying / sun, light, grass / as people pronounce / life, love, strength. Remembered how we cleared / that eternal, accursed glacier / from the city streets — and an old man / stamped his foot...»
«He did not return, even after his death, to / That ancient city he was rooted in. / Going away, he did not pause for breath / Nor look back. My song is for him. / Torches, night, a last embrace, / Fate, a wild howl, at his threshold. / Out of hell he sent her his curse / And in heaven ...»