Unmoved by bullets, confrontations,
Unmoved by songs of celebration!
And so I gape, with admiration:
“What people! What a nation!”
A nation — such, that with elation —
A mouthpiece of vastness stationed —
A poet, gapes with adoration,
Dumbstruck: O, what a nation!
It won’t submit to occupation,
Or to the luxury its shown, —
You try to beat it with starvation?
Try starving — granite stone!
(It’s there — it cuts a stone with care,
Its grammar won’t grow stagnant…
Engrained inside, it waits! — it flares! —
A garnet, makes - a magnet.)
…Took radium out of its chest,
And gave you — a donation!
Alive, — with Europe still abreast —
To bury such a nation?
If you yourself are – such, my Lord!
You’ll do it as I’m willing -
Don’t sanctify it with your horde, -
Breathe life into the living!
Его и пуля не берёт,
И песня не берёт!
Так и стою, раскрывши рот:
— Народ! Какой народ!
Народ — такой, что и поэт —
Глашатай всех широт, —
Что и поэт, раскрывши рот,
Стоит — такой народ!
Когда ни сила не берёт,
Ни дара благодать, —
Измором взять такой народ?
Гранит — измором взять!
(Сидит — и камешек гранит,
И грамотку хранит…
В твоей груди зарыт — горит! —
Гранат, творит — магнит.)
…Что радий из своей груди
Достал и подал: вот!
Живым — Европы посреди —
Зарыть такой народ?
Бог! Если ты и сам — такой,
Народ моей любви
Не со святыми упокой —
С живыми оживи!
«To fall ill as one should, deliriously / Hot, meet everyone again, / To stroll broad avenues in the seashore garden / Full of the wind and the sun. / / Even the dead, today, have agreed to come, / And the exiles, into my house. / Lead the child to me by the hand. / Long I have misse...»
«Behind the lake the moon’s not stirred / And seems to be a window through / Into a silent, well-lit house, / Where something unpleasant has occurred. / / Has the master been brought home dead, / The mistress run off with a lover, / Or has a little girl gone missing, / And her shoe...»
«A man met Rachel, in a valley. Jacob Bowed courteously, this wanderer far from home. Flocks, raising the hot dust, could not slake their Thirst. The well was blocked with a huge stone. Jacob wrenched the stone from the well Of pure water, and the flocks drank their fill. But the heart in h...»
«And the just man trailed God’s messenger, / His huge, light shape devoured the black hill. / But uneasiness shadowed his wife and spoke to her: / ‘it’s not too late, you can look back still / / At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you, / The square in which you sang, th...»