What utter happiness is it to be forsaken!
What heaven's light can one see in the past! —
Like when cold winter after summer breaks in,
We dream of sun that long ago left us.
A dried flower, a bundle of lover’s letters,
Few happy dates, a light of smiling eyes, —
And tho’ your path be now dark and helpless,
But in last spring you’ve trodden the fresh grass.
There is another kind of the love passions’ lore
Another path, deserted one and great,
«To be forsaken» — what could be wished more?
To be unloved — that is the awful fate!
О, быть покинутым — какое счастье!
Какой безмерный в прошлом виден свет
Так после лета — зимнее ненастье:
Все помнишь солнце, хоть его уж нет.
Сухой цветок, любовных писем связка,
Улыбка глаз, счастливых встречи две, —
Пускай теперь в пути темно и вязко,
Но ты весной бродил по мураве.
Ах, есть другой урок для сладострастья,
Иной есть путь — пустынен и широк.
О, быть покинутым — такое счастье!
Быть нелюбимым — вот горчайший рок.
«1 A word of peace, rejected, stands / At start of an insulted era; / There's light inside a darkened cavern / And ether of the foreign lands; / Ether, of which we just could not, / Of which to breathe we did not want; / With voice of goats, deep and gaunt, / Priests are singing, hairy...»
«In multitude of choir polyhymnal / All tender churches sing in their own voice / And the stone vaults of the Dormition cathedral / Like eyebrows in still higher arch rejoice. And from the rampart fortified by the archangels / I watched the city from a wondrous height / In the Acropolis sa...»
«Upon a horse-sleigh laid to brim with straw / And covered barely with hides and birch, / We rode around the lumbering Moscow / From Sparrow Hills to a familiar church. On Uglich street the kids are playing babki / And from a stove exudes bread's sweet smell / Through street without a hat ...»
«I When, little Straw, you lie in giant bedroom / And, sleepless, wait, that solemn, true and high, / Heavy and calm — what could be more despairing — / Forever on you will descend the sky — A whistling Straw, a dry Straw, or Straw empty, / You drank death to the brim and made it raw....»