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.
«Clouds that whiten in a dome of blue / and twisted trees sharply delineated, / the dust aglow, each shadow elongated / and phantoms that pass through the heart anew. Why was the tale so brief? I cannot say. / Was there a second half I didn’t know? / In pale skies the clouds dissolve awa...»
«Though we have parted, on my breast / your likeness as of old I wear. / It brings my spirit joy and rest, / pale phantom of a happier year. To other passions now I thrill, / yet cannot leave this love of mine. / A cast-down idol – god-like still, / a shrine abandoned, yet a shrine.»
«I come out to the path, alone, / Night and wildness are referred to God, / Through the mist, the road gleams with stone, / Stars are speaking in the shinning lot. There is grave and wonderful in heaven; / Earth is sleeping in a pale-blue light... / Why is then my heart such pined and heav...»
«Alone, I come to the road. / The stony track gleams in the mist: / the calm night listens to God, / and star is speaking to star. All’s marvellous, grave, in the sky! / Earth sleeps in the radiant blue… / Why such pain then, such weight on the heart? / Do I regret, wait for somethin...»