3
Because once when you were young and bold
you did not leave me to rot alive among
bodies without souls or fall dead among walls
I will not let you die altogether.
Because, fresh and clean, you took me
out by the hand, to freedom and brought spring leaves
in bundles into my house I shall not
let you be grown over with weeds and forgotten.
And because you met the status of my
first grey hairs like a son with pride
greeting their terror with a child’s joy:
I shall not let you go grey into men’s hearts.
3
За то, что некогда, юн и смел,
Не дал мне заживо сгнить меж тел
Бездушных, замертво пасть меж стен —
Не дам тебе — умереть совсем!
За то, что за руку, свеж и чист,
На волю вывел, весенний лист —
Вязанками приносил мне в дом! —
Не дам тебе — порасти быльём!
За то, что первых моих седин
Сыновней гордостью встретил — чин,
Ребячьей радостью встретил — страх, —
Не дам тебе — поседеть в сердцах!
«I came across a little demon, / Thin and scrawny, like a gnat. / His body was that of a child, / His face was wild: sharp and old. It rained... He 'trembled, growing darker, / Disheveled fur grew wet, / And I said to myself, “Imagine that! / He too is cold. He too is alone.” People...»
«Darkness and rain and the wind / Over wastes of the watery plain. / Here life will be dead till the spring, / And the park will be empty till then. / Alone by the sea. In the gloom / At my easel... there’s a draft in the room. Last night you were here, in this room. / And now bored wi...»
«They mock you, my country; / They sneer at you for your simplicity, / For your unsightly squalor... Put a son with his big-city friends; / He, too, will have the calm effrontery / To be ashamed of his mother, / Of her timidity, her weariness, her wretchedness; To throw pitying smiles / ...»
«It was near midnight when I entered: / She was asleep; the moon was shining / Through her window, lighting up / The dangling satin of her blanket. She lay face up, / Bare breasts parted, / And as she slept, her life was still / As a saucer of water.»