«y noon heat in a dale in Dagestan, / A bullet in my breast, my body lay; / Deep was the wound and steaming even yet, / My blood was dripping drop by drop away. I lay alone upon the valley sands. / Clustered above my head, the cliffs were steep, / Their tawny summits scorched under the sun...»
«My damask dagger with a soul of steel, / I love you! Comrade chill and bright, / Forged by a brooding Georgian for revenge. / A free Circassian honed you for the fight. A lily-hand brought you to me in parting, / A keepsake of a time too brief / And then for once not blood flowed down you...»
«Here where barbarians knelt in Roman court / Stands the basilica: original / As joyous Adam, stretching nerves, the tall / Groined archway bunches muscle as for sport. But things outside betray the secret plan: / A pact of arch and buttress here forestalls / The heavy mass from flattening...»
«Distant, the stars indifferently glimmered, / illumining the winding of the Road. / Out past a turn there stood the Mount of Olives, / and at its foot the river Kedron flowed. The meadow broke off halfway from the end. / Reaching beyond, the Milky Way was there. / The silver-ashen olive t...»