When the moonlight dispassionately illuminates
The world that is asleep at night,quite all this world,
Sometimes it seems this light just penetrates
In the departed world like under a burial vault.
By the moonlight it seems this world is afterlife,
And that before this life we lived somewhere,
That we — is not we but an echo of other life
Like prisoners in a prison without an exit there.
We scurry about this mysterious prison as shadows,
The future is alien to us, the past we just forgot,
And being wrapped in dreams so steeped in leaden drowse,
We do not live but only the right to live just hold...
Когда свет месяца бесстрастно озаряет
Заснувший ночью мир и всё, что в нём живет,
Порою кажется, что свет тот проникает
К нам, в отошедший мир, как под могильный свод.
И мнится при луне, что мир наш — мир загробный,
Что где-то, до того, когда-то жили мы,
Что мы — не мы, послед других существ, подобный
Жильцам безвыходной, таинственной тюрьмы.
И мы снуём по ней какими-то тенями,
Чужды грядущему и прошлое забыв,
В дремоте тягостной, охваченные снами,
Не жизнь, но право жить как будто сохранив...
«Blue, the color of the skies, / Was the first I recognized / Blue, its mystery beguiled / The pure senses of a child. Even now, when I am close / To my infinite repose, / When my final debts are due, / My devotion is to blue. Blue — I see a magic spell / In your eyes — those two ...»
«Some nights, as soon as I lie down, / I'm back in Russia in my dream; / My hands behind my back are bound / They're taking me to the ravine. Then I wake up, and from the chair — / Where my wrist watch always lies — / Its glowing face through darkness stares, / Like a gun muzzle in m...»
«Let me go; set me free of my shackles! / In the dark, when commotion subsides, / I'm dying; I'm drained by the battles / Within dreams of you, flowing like tides. Let the ones who at will have abandoned / Their motherland wail and complain, / They're on top; I've already descended — / ...»
«Blessed be nights; their solitude evokes / Quiet talks to you through wisps of smoke. Many stars look down, big and small, / And a lonely mouse rustles by the wall. In my chest, I touch a tender bone / Motherland, it's yours and yours alone. In your air I'm still immersed, / I exhale it i...»