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.
«In spring before the dawn we see / Heaps in the kitchen garden, / As pagans for fertility / Their festal altars burden. The fresh-cut clods flame in my plot; / In steams at early morning, / And all the earth becomes red-hot / Just like an oven burning. I cast aside this shirt of mine /...»
«This spring there is a change in everything. / More lively is the sparrows' riot. / I shall not even try to tell of it, / How bright my soul is and how quiet. My thoughts and writings are quite different, / And from the choir's loud octaves singing / The mighty voice of earth is audible /...»
«The drowsy garden scatters insects / Bronze as the ash from braziers blown. / Level with me and with my candle, / Hang flowering worlds, their leaves full grown. As into some unheard-of dogma / I move across into this night. / Where a worn poplar age has grizzled / Screens the moon’s ...»
«Without an accoucheuse, in darkness, pushing her / Blind hands against the night, the Ural fastness, torn and / Half-dead with agony, was screaming in a blur / Of mindless pain, as she was giving birth to morning. And brushed by chance, tall ranges far and wide / Loosed toppling bronze pell...»