Did I murder my father, murder my mother,
in some other life ?
Yes, oh immortal, eternal God, yes! or how
could I deserve this disgrace of suffering?
I lead a life as peaceful as death,
everything I do belongs to someone else, nothing
to me—except a languid, worthless,
distinctly platonic love...
Oh to run, to hide like a thief
— in Africa, as I hid before, to lie
beneath some royal sycamore
and never rise.
Darkness would wrap me in velvet,
the moon would dress me in silver,
and maybe the wind could forget
that, once, I worked in an office.
Вероятно, в жизни предыдущей
Я зарезал и отца и мать,
Если в этой — Боже Присносущий! —
Так позорно осужден страдать.
Каждый день мой, как мертвец, спокойный,
Все дела чужие, не мои,
Лишь томленье вовсе недостойной,
Вовсе платонической любви.
Ах, бежать бы, скрыться бы, как вору,
В Африку, как прежде, как тогда,
Лечь под царственную сикомору
И не подниматься никогда.
Бархатом меня покроет вечер,
А луна оденет в серебро,
И быть может не припомнит ветер,
Что когда-то я служил в бюро.
«by that summer snapshot taken / on someone else’s porch, skewed to one / side, that looks so like a gibbet, and / points a way out of the house not into it; / where you are wearing some violent sateen dress that / cramps the muscles of your throat like armour; / and are simply sitting ...»
«They have set a Christmas tree up in a hospital ward. / It clearly feels out of place in a cloister of suffering. / The moon over Leningrad comes to my window ledge / but does not stay long — many windows, much waiting. The moon moves on to a spry, independent old woman; / outside y...»
«Yes, I’m a sailor! A wanderer of the seas, / In endless waves a seeker of strange isles. / I yearn for new hues in a different breeze, / New tongues and alien plateaus and defiles. And women come to my passionate pleas / Obedient, with but begging in their smiles! / As painful veils dro...»
«From droplets of dew that aquiver are throwing / The lustre of jewels around, / To the pallor of spaces, where, distantly flowing, / The wave of the ocean its foam-wreath is strowing / O'er seas that no plummet can sound, / Thou art everywhere, ever, life changelessly glowing, / Now emer...»