For 20 years an American woman
Must go to far-away Egypt
Forswearing the Titanic's guidance
She sleeps on bottom darker than the crypt
In America the trumpets sing out loud
And monoliths arise of red steel towers
And then give away to chilly clouds
Their lips that with black tar are dusted over.
In the Louvre the ocean's daughter stands — alas —
Beautiful like poplar in her bliss
To grind sugary marble into dust
Like a squirrel she climbs Acropolis.
Understanding not a single sentence
She is reading Faustus on the train
All the while bemoaning that King Louis
On the throne of France does not remain.
«We are two tree-trunks lightning struck alight, / Two flames of midnight woodland by the sea. / We are two meteors soaring through the night, / The two-tipped arrow of one destiny, We are two steeds whose rein a single right / Hand holds. One spur pricks them to harmony. / We are the two ...»
«A sail drifts white and on its own / Amid the light blue ocean haze. / What does it seek in distant country? / What made it leave its native bays? The billows play. The winds are whistling / Down at the bending, creaking mast / Oh! This one seeks no happy ending / And does not flee a ha...»
«y noon heat in a dale in Dagestan, / A bullet in my breast, my body lay; / Deep was the wound and steaming even yet, / My blood was dripping drop by drop away. I lay alone upon the valley sands. / Clustered above my head, the cliffs were steep, / Their tawny summits scorched under the sun...»
«My damask dagger with a soul of steel, / I love you! Comrade chill and bright, / Forged by a brooding Georgian for revenge. / A free Circassian honed you for the fight. A lily-hand brought you to me in parting, / A keepsake of a time too brief / And then for once not blood flowed down you...»