My insatiable memory is like
A melting asphalt roadway:
I remember all who have passed along it,
Every movement of their life...
The tracks of iron wheels, of teeth,
The rusty tracks of injury and anguish.
Nearby the sweet birdlike prints
Of a dead daughter's little shoes.
Here, friends in succession have passed.
I remember all of them — why?
For they have forgotten me long ago —
And I shall never see them anymore.
There's one that passed along the edge.
The tracks of his reproach are darker.
Where is he living now? I do not know.
Perhaps, only in my memory.
A scoffing fate endowed me with
This memory as a punishment,
To plague me over the long years
With what my heart has burnt to ash.
Unconsciousness were better than a memory
Like melting asphalt, like a path —
An everlasting path under my footsteps
That cannot leave it, cannot be retraced.
На асфальт расплавленный похожа
память ненасытная моя:
я запоминаю всех прохожих,
каждое движенье бытия...
След колес, железных и зубчатых, —
ржавый след обиды и тоски.
Рядом птичий милый отпечаток —
дочери погибшей башмачки.
Здесь друзья чредою проходили.
Всех запоминала — для чего?
Ведь они меня давно забыли,
больше не увижу никого.
Вот один прошел совсем по краю.
Укоризны след его темней.
Где-то он теперь живет? Не знаю.
Может, только в памяти моей.
В наказание такую память
мне судьба-насмешница дала,
чтоб томило долгими годами
то, что сердцем выжжено дотла.
Лучше б мне беспамятство, чем память,
как асфальт расплавленный, как путь, —
вечный путь под самыми стопами:
не сойти с него, не повернуть...
« Here's your roses — pull your hands toward them — / Having gone farther than the sea, dear friend! / My dear friend, having with you born out / The most precious treasures of the land. I am robbed and deceived — There's no letter, / No ring in my memory! / How the features are...»
«You're happy? You won't say! Barely! / Better let go! / You kissed too many, I do think, / Therefrom, sorrow. All heroines of Shakespeare's tragedies / In you I see. / Nobody saved you, you the young / Tragic lady. You are so tired of repeating / Love's charm! / Eloquent, the pig ...»
«Under caresses of an ivy / Plaid I recalled yesterday's dream. / Whose victory? Who's been defeated? / What has it been? Rethinking everything once more, / Torturing myself once again. / In this, for which no word I know, / Had love ever been? Who was the hunter? Who — the hunted? ...»
«Today was melting, and today / Before the window I did stand. / A sober look, a freer chest, / I'm satisfied just once again. I don't know why. Perhaps the soul / Has simply grown tired of it all, / And somehow the rebellious pencil / I do not wish to touch at all. Distant to good and ...»