The grapes in the royal garden have rusted;
the concubine, waiting, sleeps by the wall.
Veins of Palestine, heavy with sap,
in you flows the ancient sadness of Saul.
Like a five-day-old wound his mouth crusts over:
thick is the blood with its term at hand.
How long it has been since King Saul felt like drinking!
How long his eye has been probing the land.
The roses of Jericho burn on his temples,
like bellows his chest heaves, working its load,
and they drag, and they drag, their souls all sighing,
the young men of Palestine with their black blood.
Виноградины тщетно в садах ржавели,
И наложница, тщетно прождав, уснула.
Палестинские жилы! — Смолы тяже́ле
Протекает в вас древняя грусть Саула.
Пятидневною раною рот запёкся.
Тяжек ход твой, о кровь, приближаясь к сроку!
Так давно уж Саулу-Царю не пьётся,
Так давно уже землю пытает око.
Иерихонские розы горят на скулах,
И работает грудь наподобье горна.
И влачат, и влачат этот вздох Саулов
Палестинские отроки с кровью чёрной.
«All on the earth will die — and youth and mother, / Wife will betray you, leave once faithful friend, / But you learn to enjoy the bliss another — / Look in a mirror of the polar land. Get on your bark, sail to the distant Pole / In walls of ice — and bit by bit forget / How they l...»
«I’m sick, for sure: deep darkness holds my heart, / I’m bored with the people and the stories, / And dream of treasures of the kingdoms, glories, / And yataghans, all covered with blood. It seems to me – and this is no fraud – / A Tartar, squint, was one of my begetters, / That fi...»
«My love for you is now a baby elephant / who was born in Berlin or Paris / and treads with padded feet / the rooms of the menagerie owner. / Do not offer him French rolls, / do not offer him c abbage slumps, / he can eat just a quarter of a mandarin, / a lump of sugar or a sweet. / D...»
«My fantasy is proud and plain: / To grasp the crop, leap the stirrup, / Outrace sluggish time, / And always kiss fresh lips; And in old age before Christ’s grace, / With ash on head and eyes cast down / Breast burdened by an iron cross, / At last to take salvation’s burden. For onl...»