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…
«Night. Street. Lamplight. Pharmacy. / A dim senseless glow all about. / Live twenty more years, look around, what’s to see? / Nothing will change. No way out. Then die — and all begins over to breathe and to be, / And the same bleary haze hovers over the damp / Night, icy ripples...»
«The day will come; I’ll disappear, / While in this selfsame empty room, / That table, bench, icon austere / The same contours of space consume. And just as now will flutter in / That silken butterfly serene, / To rustle, palpitate and ding / Against the ceiling’s bluish-green. And ...»
«I’m glad that you’re not indisposed with feelings steeped in me. / I’m glad that I’m not indisposed with feelings steeped in you. / That never will earth’s gravid sphere float free / Beneath our giddy footsteps specked with dew. / I’m glad that we can laugh capriciously, / Ligh...»
«Midnight estate, Genghis Khanerate! / Rustle, blue birches. / Bright sunset, Zarathustrate! / And you, blue sky, Mozartate! / You twilight-cloud, be Goya! / And you at night, cloud, rainate! / A whirlwind of smiles just flew by, / Laughing with claws of shrieking, / Then I saw the ha...»