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.
«I hate the roar of giant cities, neighborhoods, / I am repulsed by crowd commotion, / My spirit lives in depths of woods, / Where in secluded calm devotion / I hark to music of unseen sweet voices' moods, / ...»
«This woman! I grow mute and hazy. / Because of this, see, I avert my eyes. / I don’t trust the cuckoos or the daisies, / And I don’t visit Gypsies for advice. They’ll be preaching: do not love her, / They’ll be screeching: it is all deceit, / They will prophesy, foretell, foreshad...»
«What did I say to Maria the nurse / when I was hugging her? / "You know that officer’s daughters / don’t look on us soldiers." And the field of clovers was beneath us / quite like the river. / And the waves of the clovers became higher / and we swayed upon them. And Maria, opening ...»
«What's friendship? The hangover's languid burn, / restless talk of being spurned, / swapping vanity, slacking / or the shame of a patron’s backing.»