I am. You will be. ’Twixt us there’s a chasm.
I drink. You thirst. Agreeing is but futile.
A decade, no, a hundred thousand years
Divide us. God above does not build bridges.
So be! Now that is my commandment. Now let
Me by. I wouldn’t want your growing stunted
Because I breathed. I am. You will be. After
Ten springs you’ll say: I am! You were — my answer...
Я — есмь. Ты — будешь. Между нами — бездна.
Я пью. Ты жаждешь. Сговориться — тщетно.
Нас десять лет, нас сто тысячелетий
Разъединяют. — Бог мостов не строит.
Будь! — это заповедь моя. Дай — мимо
Пройти, дыханьем не нарушив роста.
Я — есмь. Ты будешь. Через десять вёсен
Ты скажешь: — есмь! — а я скажу: — когда-то…
«Upon the cobbles / of my foot-clobbered soul, / the steps of loonies / twine their grinding rhymes. / Where the towns / are hung / and in the nooses of clouds / the crooked necks of towers / are wrung, / I start to cry / because / by the crossroads / the cops are crucified.»
«Please Listen! / If stars are lit, / it is something / that somebody needs? / Someone wants them / To be and to last, / Even calls them pearls, those specs of spit. / And suffocating / In the blizzards of midday dust, / He bursts in on God, / afraid it's too late to s...»
«I am back in my city, dear to me like my tears / Like small veins, swollen glands of my infancy years. You have come here, now go ahead in one gulp / Down the fish-oil of Leningrad’s river lights lamps Can you make out this day of December that’s marred / By the egg-yolk stirred into the...»
«We exist out of touch with the land underneath / Our words from ten paces conceal our grief / Just the Kremlin's highlander's voice's present. / The soul crusher and slayer of peasants (Version. / Where's enough for a half talk words landed, / They'll remind of the Kremlin's highlander.)...»