Hands — in the dips
Of all resold, repledged, repossessed!
It’s just the lips,
The hands I mustn’t confuse with the rest!
All those vain
Petty things that steal me from sanity.
Hands to heaven,
Friend, here I plead to my own memory!
My poetry
(The dumping ground of my Highnesses!)
Is not to see
You wilt like every other guy once has.
My breast is deep
(Being a thousand-breast-wide mass
Grave!) – May it keep
You clear of rain as the millennia pass…
Midst bodies, may
You — my damnation two-starry-eyed! —
Never decay,
Tagged: unidentified.
Руки — и в круг
Перепродаж и переуступок!
Только бы губ,
Только бы рук мне не перепутать!
Этих вот всех
Суетностей, от которых сна нет.
Руки воздев
Друг, заклинаю свою же память!
Чтобы в стихах
(Свалочной яме моих Высочеств!)
Ты не зачах,
Ты не усох наподобье прочих.
Чтобы в груди
(В тысячегрудой моей могиле
Братской!) — дожди
Тысячелетий тебя не мыли...
Тело меж тел,
— Ты, что мне пропадом был двухзвёздным!..
Чтоб не истлел
С надписью: не опознан.
«The vanished joy of my crazy years / Is as heavy as gloomy hang-over. / But, like wine, the sorrow of past days / Is stronger with time. / My path is sad. The waving sea of the future / Promises me only toil and sorrow. But, O my friends, I do not wish to die, / I want to live –...»
«Of madness years the faded joy and laughter / Weigh gravely like a hazy morning after. / And yet the sorrows of the finished page, / Like fancy wine, still stronger get with age. / My way lies dreary. Work and grief are written / In what’s to come, which like the sea is smitten. But, o...»
«The sultry sun heats to the seventh sweat. / The ravine rages in the frenzy, senseless. / As though a cowgirl working in the stead, — / The spring is busy, and its chores are endless. Out in the light, the snow-banks slowly slump, / Their bloodless, twig-like veins turn paler still. / ...»
«Oh my dear maple, frozen stiff and bare, / Why do you stand bending in the blizzard there? / / Have you seen a vision? Have you heard a babble? / Just like you are out for an idle ramble. / / Like a tipsy warden, walking on the roadside, / You have stuck in snowdrift, hit by burnin...»