You, walking past me and racing
After charms that you’ll hardly attain, —
If you knew how much fire is wasted,
How much life is wasted in vain!
And what flames, so courageously rash,
An occasional shade can evoke,
And how my heart was burnt into ash
By this useless gunpowder smoke.
O, the trains leaving terminals nightly,
Carrying sleep wherever they go...
Then again, I know, it’s unlikely
That you’d know, even if you could know —
Why my speeches are sharp and brief
In the smoke of my cigarette, —
How much dark and menacing grief
Is concealed in my golden-haired head.
Вы, идущие мимо меня
К не моим и сомнительным чарам, —
Если б знали вы, сколько огня,
Сколько жизни, растраченной даром,
И какой героический пыл
На случайную тень и на шорох...
И как сердце мне испепелил
Этот даром истраченный порох.
О, летящие в ночь поезда,
Уносящие сон на вокзале...
Впрочем, знаю я, что и тогда
Не узнали бы вы — если б знали —
Почему мои речи резки
В вечном дыме моей папиросы,—
Сколько темной и грозной тоски
В голове моей светловолосой.
«Though we have parted, on my breast / your likeness as of old I wear. / It brings my spirit joy and rest, / pale phantom of a happier year. To other passions now I thrill, / yet cannot leave this love of mine. / A cast-down idol – god-like still, / a shrine abandoned, yet a shrine.»
«I come out to the path, alone, / Night and wildness are referred to God, / Through the mist, the road gleams with stone, / Stars are speaking in the shinning lot. There is grave and wonderful in heaven; / Earth is sleeping in a pale-blue light... / Why is then my heart such pined and heav...»
«Alone, I come to the road. / The stony track gleams in the mist: / the calm night listens to God, / and star is speaking to star. All’s marvellous, grave, in the sky! / Earth sleeps in the radiant blue… / Why such pain then, such weight on the heart? / Do I regret, wait for somethin...»
«Don’t tempt me with your tender ruses, / with the return of passion’s blaze: / a disenchanted man refuses / inveiglements of former days! / My faith in faithfulness has faded, / my faith in love has passed its prime; / I won’t indugle another time / in dreams degrading and degrad...»