There are faces like magnificent portals,
Everywhere the exalted is found in the small.
There are faces like wretched hovels,
Where liver is cooked and rennet boiled.
Some are cold, lifeless faces
Locked up with a dungeon's bars.
Others are towers, where no one has toiled
Or peered out from turreted places.
But once I knew a little hut,
Simple and modest in every regard,
And through its windows spring's scents
Wafted to me from the yard.
Indeed the world is great and glorious!
There are faces like songs of rejoicing,
From whose radiant sun-like notes,
A song of the heavens gloats.
Есть лица, подобные пышным порталам,
Где всюду великое чудится в малом.
Есть лица — подобия жалких лачуг,
Где варится печень и мокнет сычуг.
Иные холодные, мертвые лица
Закрыты решетками, словно темница.
Другие — как башни, в которых давно
Никто не живет и не смотрит в окно.
Но малую хижинку знал я когда-то,
Была неказиста она, небогата,
Зато из окошка ее на меня
Струилось дыханье весеннего дня.
Поистине мир и велик и чудесен!
Есть лица — подобья ликующих песен.
Из этих, как солнце, сияющих нот
Составлена песня небесных высот.
«A salute to our vile evening planet! / Puddles, banisters, windows glisten. / Through the downpour I wanly straggle, / Shoulders sodden, and hat brim dripping. / Now we all have been rendered homeless, / Made to wander through all the ages, / And the desolate rain sings hopeless / Song...»
«a Sonnet Forehead – / Chalk. / Coffin / Pale. Priest / Sang. / Shaft / Bang! Day / Sacred! / Crypt / Blind. / / Shade – / To hell!»
«In me is the beginning, in me the end. / What’s been accomplished by me a blink! / Yet still I am a reliable chain link: / This happiness to me has been given. In the new but greater Russia they will / erect to me a Janus-faced idol at / the broad cross-roads of two city streets / whe...»
«Walked up — / businesslike, / behind my roar, / behind my height, / took one look, / and saw I was just a boy. / Without a second thought, / you took my heart away / and simply / went off to play — / like a girl with a ball. / And every one — / as if witnessing a miracl...»