Goldfinch, friend, I'll cock my head —
let's check the world out, just me and you:
this winter's day pricks like chaff;
does it sting your eyes too?
Boat-tailed, feathers yellow-black,
sopped in colour beneath your beak,
do you get, you goldfinch you,
just how you flaunt it?
What's he thinking, little airhead? —
white and yellow, black and red!
Both eyes check both ways — both! —
will check no more — he's bolted!
Мой щегол, я голову закину —
Поглядим на мир вдвоем:
Зимний день, колючий, как мякина,
Так ли жестк в зрачке твоем?
Хвостик лодкой, перья черно-желты,
Ниже клюва в краску влит,
Сознаёшь ли — до чего щегол ты,
До чего ты щегловит?
Что за воздух у него в надлобье —
Чёрн и красен, жёлт и бел!
В обе стороны он в оба смотрит — в обе! —
Не посмотрит — улетел!
«(To my friend, S. K. Bulich) Select a dark night and in a field, unpeopled, naked, / dip into gray twilight.... May the air, having fanned, becalm, / May the stars, winking, in the cold sky slumber on.... / Tell the heart not to count its thumps.... / Stop in mid-step and listen! You're no...»
«Sad and made of copper / The symbol we are wed, / Even our comedies / End a little sadly…. / Our joyful neighbors / Wear their infernal / Hirsute fur coats…. / And that only… banal / Are our mangy bears / With prey trembling / In blood-covered lips.»
«For what purpose, when dreams betray, / That words brim over with delusions? / For what purpose, on a forgotten grave, / Grass grows greener and emits a noise? For what purpose these lunar heights, / If my garden is silent and dark? / And the tails of her plaits are untied, / And I hear...»
«Among worlds shone, amid glimmers, / A single star whose name I repeat.... / Not so that I may come to love it, / But because I am weary of the rest. And if I find doubt a burden, / I seek only from her an answer, / Not because she shines brightly / But because with her I need no light.»