to Valentina Serova
With glass a thousand miles thick
Parting has glazed the windows of your flat;
And I look through, as from another world,
But not a sound is audible through that.
I see you pass and sit down by the window.
You smile at someone; you get up unheard.
You speak. Of what? Perhaps you speak of me?
No good! I cannot hear a single word!
How painful, how impossible it is —
That separation makes us deaf and dumb!
Or could it be that distance justifies
The actual gulf between us that has come?
Remember how we cleared the air that night?
It seemed, perhaps, a new and honest start!
And then — the glass. And just the moving lips..
And now I cannot even hear your heart!
Стекло тысячеверстной толщины
Разлука вставила в окно твоей квартиры,
И я смотрю, как из другого мира,
Мне голоса в ней больше не слышны.
Вот ты прошла, присела на окне,
Кому-то улыбнулась, встала снова,
Сказала что-то. Может, обо мне?
А что? Не слышу ничего, ни слова.
Какое невозможное страданье
Опять, уехав, быть глухонемым!
Но что, как вдруг дана лишь в оправданье
На этот раз разлука нам двоим?
Ты помнишь честный вечер объясненья,
Когда, казалось, смеем всё сказать.
И вдруг — стекло. И только губ движенье,
И даже стука сердца не слыхать.
«Instead of wisdom — experience was / My fresh, non-quenching glass. / My youth was Sunday prayer’s words… / Could I forget my past? How many deserted roads were trod / With him, who wasn’t dear, / How many times did I bow to God, / For him, who was sincere… I have become forg...»
«Ah! Here you come again. Not as a smitten youth, / But as a man who’s stern, unbending and uncouth, / You walk inside and barely look up at me at all. / The calm before the storm is frightening to my soul. / You ask me what it was that I have done to you, / Who offered up yourself, with ...»
«The muse went on her way, / Autumnal and steep all through, / Her suntan legs were sprayed / With luminous drops of dew. I tried and begged her to brave / The winter and not to leave. / She only replied: “It’s a grave, / How can you even breathe?” I wanted to give her a dove / ...»
«They soar, they are somewhere mid-flight, / The words of love and liberation, / And I’m succumbing to stage-fright, / My lips — ice cold in trepidation. But soon, where birches, thin and humble, / Caress the windows with their leaves, — / The voice of the unseen will rumble, / An...»