My poems! Witnesses of unavailing
Tears for the sad earth shed!
Born in the moment when the soul is failing,
And by the storm-winds bred;
Against men's hearts you beat with wistful wailing
Like waves on cliffs as dead.
Стихи мои! Свидетели живые
За мир пролитых слез!
Родитесь вы в минуты роковые
Душевных гроз
И бьетесь о сердца людские,
Как волны об утес.
«Beside their big fire they had laid themselves down, / Their powerless bodies prostrate. / A bullet had gone through the temple of one / To home in the head of his mate. The hands of the two had locked in a vice / The now dead machine gun they’d manned, / And neither the storm nor the s...»
«I’ve never been even once in a bar-room, / I’ve never drunk whisky neat with sailors, / I’ll never, I guess, on a horse go charging / Across the desert steppes of Arabia. I'm not cut out for hauling in canvas, / For waving an oar, braving stormy weather. / She loves a young salt, do...»
«Times aren’t what they were like, people feel dislocated, / And the ground underfoot’s not the same, don’t you doubt it. / Was a time with their God people cooperated, / Then they had second thoughts-they would manage without Him. Granny dearest, you haven’t a body to talk to. / In ...»
«Taras, in the tale / Gogol tells us, was tough... / No quarter he gave / Foe or traitor. / I hear him call / At midnight to his son, / “The child of my loins, I shall slay thee!” The beautiful pani, / Andrii’s fateful love, / Pale-faced, old Taras implores mutely... / The pi...»