When I watch the flight of leaves,
To the cobblestones at my feet,
Swept up — as if by an artist,
Whose picture’s at last complete,
I think how (already no one likes
My figure, face deep in thought)
A strongly yellow, decidedly rusty,
Leaf, there at the crown’s — forgot.
Когда я гляжу на летящие листья,
Слетающие на булыжный торец,
Сметаемые — как художника кистью,
Картину кончающего наконец,
Я думаю (уж никому не по нраву
Ни стан мой, ни весь мой задумчивый вид),
Что явственно жёлтый, решительно ржавый
Один такой лист на вершине — забыт.
«Black spring! Pick up your pen, and weeping, / Of February, in sobs and ink, / Write poems, while the slush in thunder / Is burning in the black of spring. Through clanking wheels, through church bells ringing / A hired cab will take you where / The town has ended, where the showers ...»
«It's dreadful! It drips and it listens: / Does nobody else in the world / Press branches, like lace, in a window' / Or is there...a witness? The ground is so swollen and smothered, / Too spongy, too heavy to breathe / But listen — far off, as in August — / How midnight grows ripe in...»
«Goldfinch, friend, I'll cock my head — / let's check the world out, just me and you: / this winter's day pricks like chaff; / does it sting your eyes too? Boat-tailed, feathers yellow-black, / sopped in colour beneath your beak, / do you get, you goldfinch you, / just how you flaunt i...»
«I can’t submit myself to man. / Who’d choose to be a slave? / We judge each other all life long — / and then? A lonely grave. I can’t submit myself to God, / because I love Him so. / For God has set me on this road — / where else am I to go? I tear the nets that bind mankind ...»