Nikolay Gumilev
You and Me

Sure, I’m not good enough,
I come from the provinces,
I don’t strum a guitar
but blow an old reed flute.

I don’t read poems in velvet rooms and red-plush
halls, to dark dresses and starched black coats;
I read to waterfalls, I read to dragons,
I read to clouds.

When I’m in love — it’s like a bedouin
falling on his face when he finds water,
not like a knight in a picture
staring up at the stars — and waiting.

I won’t die in a bed
with a doctor and a lawyer puffing up my pillow,
but in some narrow ditch,
covered with wild ivy,

And the Heaven I’ll go to won’t be the hygienic
Protestant paradise, open to everyone,
but that Heaven where whores and robbers and Judean
tax collectors will yell: Hey! Come out of that ditch!

Translated by Burton Raffel and Alla Burago

(Nikolay Gumilev`s site)