16
Like drunk, like sleepy
Unawares, without caution,
The dimples of temples:
Sleepless conscience.
Empty eye sockets:
All dead and light.
Empty glass of a dreamer
And man with second sight.
Not you on
Still rustling pile of garbage
Carried out —
Returning by Hades' gorge?
Did not this,
Ringing with a silver bell,
Head flow past
The sleepy Gebr?
16
Как сонный, как пьяный,
Врасплох, не готовясь.
Височные ямы:
Бессонная совесть.
Пустые глазницы:
Мертво и светло.
Сновидца, всевидца
Пустое стекло.
Не ты ли
Её шелестящей хламиды
Не вынес —
Обратным ущельем Аида?
Не эта ль,
Серебряным звоном полна,
Вдоль сонного Гебра
Плыла голова?
«Shout for joy! There is no Tsar. / Shout for joy! There is no Russia. / Shout for joy! For God is dead. All there is, is icy star, / All there is, is dawning’s yellow, / As the years in millions thread. Shout for joy! There is no one, / Shout for joy! There’s nothing spun, / It’s...»
«Out on horseback in the stillness. / Hooves resounding in the snow. / Only crows in dusty shrillness / Cackled in the meadow’s glow. Held by unseen fable’s rapture, / Forest slept beneath the drifts. / There in kerchief’s frozen capture / Pine displayed her snowy shifts. Crone-li...»
«Don’t distort your smile, away with teasing hands — / For I love another — off with your demands. Tell the truth, you know it — know it very well — / My regard’s not yours — another’s cast her spell. Passer-by I was. My heart’s not really here — / Only loitered then th...»
«On distant place my dreams are set / Where all can hear the cries and sobbing, / To share in alien sorrow’s net / And anguished grieving’s painful throbbing. For there, I’m sure that I can find / Delight in life and exaltation, / And there, escaping fortune’s bind, / I’ll cast...»