We pronounced
the simplest, poorest words
as if they had never been said.
We were saying
sun, light, grass
as people pronounce
life, love, strength.
Remembered how we cleared
that eternal, accursed glacier
from the city streets — and an old man
stamped his foot against the pavement,
shouting, «Asphalt, friends, asphault!»
As if he were a sailor long ago,
calling out «Land, land!»
...О да, — простые, бедные слова
мы точно в первый раз произносили,
мы говорили: солнце, свет, трава,
как произносят: жизнь, любовь и сила.
А помнишь ли, как с города ледник
сдирали мы, четырежды проклятый,
как бил в панель ногой один старик
и все кричал: «Асфальт, асфальт,
ребята!..»
Так, милый берег видя с корабля,
кричали в старину: «Земля, земля!..»
«For how long will you keep in hiding / Behind the fog, ye Russian star, / Or will you stay forever priding / In stark delusions, false, bizarre? / / Could it be true, your shining glory / Would scatter like a shooting star, / When faced with gazes, greedy, gory, / So keen to reach y...»
«In the calm night, in late summer, / How the stars grow blush in heaven! / Under their gloomy light rays / Sleepy wheatfields ripen, heaving... / How their golden waves are shining / In the calmness of the night, / They are drowsy, eerie silent, / Whitened by the bright moon light... /...»
«Nature is a sphinx. / The truer she kills you / with her eternal riddle, / it's more than likely, / for centuries, / the truer she has fooled you.»
«Lord, send your comfort / to him who, during summerТs scorching heat, / like some poor beggar past a garden, / along a hot road drags his weary feet, who gazes in passing across a fence / at the shades of trees, at valleysТ golden grain / and at the inaccessible coolness / of softly b...»