How many of earth’s oceans I’ve sailed, oceans
ancient, gay, foam-covered;
how many matchless nights and days
have gone guiding caravans across the steppes...
How we laughed, then,
my Muse and I, free...
Rhymes flew together like birds,
so many — I don’t dare remember how many.
Only love is left, calling
like the strings of an angel’s harp,
like a thin needle stabbing the heart
with Heaven’s blue lights.
Only you are left. I’ve seen,
my eyes open, the night’s sun,
and you are all I live for,
work for, fight for.
In this restless hell of mine — yes,
you are the pilgrims’ Jerusalem.
I should mention your name
with a seraphim’s tongue.
В скольких земных океанах я плыл,
Древних, веселых и пенных,
Сколько в степях караваны водил
Дней и ночей несравненных…
Как мы смеялись в былые года
С вольною Музой моею…
Рифмы, как птицы, слетались тогда,
Сколько — и вспомнить не смею.
Только любовь мне осталась, струной
Ангельской арфы взывая,
Душу пронзая, как тонкой иглой,
Синими светами рая.
Ты мне осталась одна. Наяву
Видевший солнце ночное,
Лишь для тебя на земле я живу,
Делаю дело земное.
Да, ты в моей беспокойной судьбе —
Ерусалим пилигримов.
Надо бы мне говорить о тебе
На языке серафимов.
«Brethren, let’s praise the dusk of freedom / With its great year of twilit gloom, / Its hefty grove of dangling snares / Cast into the night’s jet-black waters! / From under a deaf age’s yoke / You rise, O sun! O judge! O folk! And let us praise the fatal burden / Taken up in tear...»
«Whoever kisses time’s ancient nodding head / will remember later, like a loving son, / how the old man lay down to sleep / in the drift of wheat outside the window. / He who has opened the eyes of the age, / two large sleepy apples with inflamed lids, / hears forever after the roar of ...»
«He who has kissed time on its tormented temple / With filial tenderness will subsequently / Recollect how time took to its bed in a snowbank / The color of wheat beyond the window. / He who had raised the century’s inflamed eyelids — / Two giant apples swollen with sleep — / Will c...»
«Skyscrapers, and the sky below, / It nears the earth in misty layers. / The same covert and secret woe / Persists in vast and happy Paris. The evening boulevards are loud, / The sunset’s final glimmer dies. / And there are couples all around, / And trembling lips and daring eyes. I...»