1
You did not bend the shoulders, when the red-haired
Impostor seized you and for you did reach.
Where is your pride, you baroness? Your blush,
You beauty? Brilliant girl, your speech?
Like Tsar Peter, the law of sons despising,
Did lust with avarice after your head —
You answered to the Tsar of Russia truly
As baroness Morozova on the sled.
The fiery drink was not at all forgotten
By lips of Bonapart that were so cold.
The sides of Kremlin all things will endure.
In your cathedral not the first time stands a stall.
1
Когда рыжеволосый Самозванец
Тебя схватил — ты не согнула плеч.
Где спесь твоя, княгинюшка? — Румянец,
Красавица? — Разумница, — где речь?
Как Пётр-Царь, презрев закон сыновний,
Позарился на голову твою —
Боярыней Морозовой на дровнях
Ты отвечала Русскому Царю.
Не позабыли огненного пойла
Буонапарта хладные уста.
Не в первый раз в твоих соборах — стойла.
Всё вынесут кремлёвские бока.
____
Москве. 1. Когда рыжеволосый Самозванец...
Москве. 2. Гришка-Вор тебя не ополячил...
Москве. 3. Жидкий звон, постный звон...
«I feel my life hang by a hair / as I wait at night for the Muse; / youth, freedom, fame melt into air / as my guest appears with her flute. She enters, tosses back her shawl; / her half-closed eyes let nothing pass. / "So it was you who sang of Hell / to Dante?" "Yes," she says, "it wa...»
«Nothing, nothing will be returned; / love, forgiveness — unearned, unlearned; / though we can never learn to forget. Sweet is the sleep of an alien land. / We sense spring, hear the sea’s even sound / in this world of eternal torment.»
«for Osip Mandelstam All the town’s gripped in an icy fist. / Trees and walls and snow are set in glass. / I pick my timid way across the crystal. / Unsteadily the painted sledges pass. / Flocks of crows above St Peter’s, wheeling. / The dome amongst the poplars, green and pale in / ...»
«I dearly, dearly long to be with you, / to sit and chat with you, drink tea with you. You’d do the talking — I would be all ears; / your voice grows ever dearer with the years. You, too, knew grief and fury and disdain; / you, too, died slowly, slowly and in pain.»