Oh, Muse! I am at my coffin's door!
Be as it may, I am much to blame,
And let people's spite one hundred
Times more my sins' scope multiply –
Do not cry! Our drawn lot enviable,
They will not dispute this nor fight:
Between me and many honest hearts
You will not allow too long a rupture
In our living, breathing, blood union!
Some non-Russian will, without love,
Look upon you, pallid, blood-covered,
Flesh-flayed-by-a-thousand-strokes Muse...
О Муза! я у двери гроба!
Пускай я много виноват,
Пусть увеличит во сто крат
Мои вины людская злоба —
Не плачь! завиден жребий наш,
Не наругаются над нами:
Меж мной и честными сердцами
Порваться долго ты не дашь
Живому, кровному союзу!
Не русский — взглянет без любви
На эту бледную, в крови,
Кнутом иссеченную Музу…
«She raised herself on her fingers / and made me a gift of her lips. / I kissed her a little tiredly / in the moist autumn silence. Tears were dropping soundlessly / in the moist autumn silence. / The dreary day expired, we weary / like everything that isn't in a dream.»
«Amid the worlds, in twinkling of the stars / There’s the One, whose name I always utter… / ‘Tis not because I love Her with my heart, / But rather because languish I with others. And if my doubt is hard in all its might, / ‘Tis She alone, whom always I inquire, / ‘Tis not becaus...»
«(To my friend, S. K. Bulich) Select a dark night and in a field, unpeopled, naked, / dip into gray twilight.... May the air, having fanned, becalm, / May the stars, winking, in the cold sky slumber on.... / Tell the heart not to count its thumps.... / Stop in mid-step and listen! You're no...»
«Sad and made of copper / The symbol we are wed, / Even our comedies / End a little sadly…. / Our joyful neighbors / Wear their infernal / Hirsute fur coats…. / And that only… banal / Are our mangy bears / With prey trembling / In blood-covered lips.»