How they flare up, a tinder bonfire
on the plaza of night, our holy convictions!
Before the usurping edict of tenderness
what are our heroes, our marble traditions?
How solemnly fall the lofty antiques
one by one, and the modes of nobility,
and, oh, our ancestral jewels under
the blow of that king-pretender: pity.
The simpler gesture: to bend our heads
aware that lowliness has us in harness
down along the precipitous slope,
the irresistible incline of tenderness
Как разгораются — каким валежником!
На площадях ночных — святыни кровные!
Пред самозванческим указом Нежности —
Что наши доблести и родословные!
С какой торжественною постепенностью
Спадают выспренные обветшалости!
О наши прадедовы драгоценности
Под самозванческим ударом Жалости!
А проще: лоб склонивши в глубь ладонную,
В сознаньи низости и неизбежности —
Вниз по отлогому — по неуклонному —
Неумолимому наклону Нежности…
«And once more the autumn blasts like Tamerlane, / There is silence in the streets of Arbat. / Beyond the little station or beyond the haze / The impassable road is dark. So here it is, the latest one! And the rage / Subsides. It's as if the world had gone deaf... / A mighty, evangelical o...»
«The one people once called / King in jest, God in fact, / Who was killed, and whose implement of torture / Was heated by the warmth of my breast... / The disciples of Christ tasted death, / And the old gossips, and the soldiers, / And the procurator from Rome — all gone. / There, whe...»
«Oh, to hell with this storm, damn this snow and hail – / pounding on the rooftop, driving in white nails! / But me – I’m not frightened, and I know my fate: / my wastrel heart has nailed me to you – nailed us tight! »
«There are such easy ways / to leave this life, / to burn to an end / without pain or thought, / but a Russian poet / has no such luck. / A bullet is more likely / to show his winged soul / the way to Heaven; / or else the shaggy paw / of voiceless terror will squeeze / the life...»