To melt all, that the people forget all,
Like a candle or molten snow?
Be a handful of dust in the future
Under cross of a grave? I say no!
Every moment, from anguish concussing,
I return to the same once again:
Die forever! Did for this the fortune
Give me all things to understand?
Night in child's room, cobweb in the meadow,
In room I am sitting with dolls,
The accursed soul by the vision..
To know and feel it for all!
For this (strength is in the things clear)
I surrender to court what is dear,
That the youth would retain, and forever,
All of my restless young years.
Всe таить, чтобы люди забыли,
Как растаявший снег и свечу?
Быть в грядущем лишь горсточкой пыли
Под могильным крестом? Не хочу!
Каждый миг, содрогаясь от боли,
К одному возвращаюсь опять:
Навсегда умереть! Для того ли
Мне судьбою дано всe понять?
Вечер в детской, где с куклами сяду,
На лугу паутинную нить,
Осужденную душу по взгляду...
Всe понять и за всех пережить!
Для того я (в проявленном — сила)
Всe родное на суд отдаю,
Чтобы молодость вечно хранила
Беспокойную юность мою.
«Sleep on a Summer’s Night / (Five Verses) 4 I hang inside the writer’s utensil / A large lustrous violet drop. Beneath the house — an enigmatic trench. / A hundredth part of the hard air / Is kindled by a puff of sizzling coke, / And scarcely has the merest daybreak been cut off /...»
«Sleep on a Summer’s Night / (Five Verses) 5 Drink and write, with a kerosene lamp, / Watching for patrols’ revving motors / In the street, with beer mug in hand / As you sip the July night away. The green-eyed thirsty giant! / Pickles spill over the poplar-wood table, / Petty hood...»
«Days spread out with distinct somberness. / The disconsolate brook flows along / In front of my entry hall porch door / Outside my window’s unblocked view. Outside the fence along the road / The public garden flows from its bank. / Sprawling down, like beasts from a lair, / Tumultuous...»
«Fame is unsightly, when one is alive. / It does nothing to raise one up. / One must not establish archives / Nor tremble over one’s manuscripts. The aim of creation — self-reflection, / Not hoopla, not grand success. / To be a parable on any old tongue / Is infamy and nothingness. ...»