Mikhail Svetlov
- The Italian, by Alex Miller
(Black cross on the Italian’s bosom...) - The Italian Cross, by Keith Johnson
(There was a black cross on his chest...)
«In my dreams I was catching the vanishing shadows, / All the vanishing shadows of fast-waning day, / I was mounting a tower, the stairs were atremble, / All the stairs were atremble as I went on my way. And the higher I mounted, the clearer I saw them, / All the clearer I saw them, the outl...»
«I don’t know the wisdom others seem to need, / Only little transient things I pour in my verse. / Everything that’s transient contains whole worlds for me, / Full of rainbow colors, shifting, playing, free. Wise men, do not curse me. What am I to you? / See, I’m nothing but a cloud, a...»
«The wind gathers storm clouds / above the sea’s gray plain. / Like black lightning the Stormy Petrel / flits between sea and cloud. / Now touching a wave with his wing, now shooting / like an arrow up into the clouds, he screams, / and the storm clouds hear joy / in the bird’s impe...»
«High above the silvery ocean winds are gathering the storm-clouds, and between the clouds and ocean proudly wheels the Stormy Petrel, like a streak of sable lightning. Now his wing the wave caresses, now he rises like an arrow, cleaving clouds and crying fiercely, while the clouds detect a rapture ...»