Chénier went up to meet the guillotine,
And I'm alive. That is a dreadful sin.
There are times that steel over everyone.
He is no bard who sings as bullets spin.
He is no father, trembling at the gate,
Whose arms rip battle-armor off his son.
There are times when the sun is deadly sin.
It is no human who today lives on.
Андрей Шенье взошёл на эшафот,
А я живу — и это страшный грех.
Есть времена — железные — для всех.
И не певец, кто в порохе — поёт.
И не отец, кто с сына у ворот
Дрожа срывает воинский доспех.
Есть времена, где солнце — смертный грех.
Не человек — кто в наши дни живёт.
«So it begins. Year two rushes / From nurse into the darkness of melodies, / It whistles, it chirps, — then words / Begin around the third year. Thus does understanding begin. / And in the start-up noise of the turbine / It seems, that mother — is not mother. / You’re — not you, ...»
«This is how they start. At two years / They dash from their nannies into melody's darkness, / They chirp, they whistle, - and words / Appear around year three. This is how they start to understand. / And through the roar of the ignited turbine / It comes to seem that mother isn't mother. ...»
«Us few. Perhaps us three — just — / Blazing and infernal from Donets / Stuck beneath gray racing crusts / Of rain, clouds and Soviets / Of soldiers, poems and debates / About transportation and the arts. We were people. Now we’re epochs. / As time overtakes us in a rush of coaches...»
«The slanting pictures fly in like streaming rain / From the roadway where candles are snuffed, / But on their hooks and walls I’m unable to train them / To fall into line with feet and rhymes. But what if the universe were just — a mask? / Such that in certain latitudes, / Winter caus...»