Into the circling choral dance of shadows that trampled the soft meadow,
I merged with my melodious name,
But everything melted away and only a faint sound
Has remained in my misty memory.
At first I thought my name seraphic
And I shunned by slight body;
Some days passed and I fused with it
And dissolved into the sweet shadow.
And now once more the apple tree sheds its wild fruit
And a mysterious image gleams at me,
Blasphemes and curses itself
And swallows coals of jealousy.
But happiness rolls along like a golden hoop
Fulfilling another's will
And we chase after the light spring
Cleaving the air with our palms.
And things are so arranged that we do not leave
The enchanted circle.
The tensile hills of the maiden earth
Lie tightly swathed.
Я в хоровод теней, топтавший нежный луг,
С певучим именем вмешался,
Но все растаяло, и только слабый звук
В туманной памяти остался.
Сначала думал я, что имя — серафим,
И тела легкого дичился,
Немного дней прошло, и я смешался с ним
И в милой тени растворился.
И снова яблоня теряет дикий плод,
И тайный образ мне мелькает,
И богохульствует, и сам себя клянет,
И угли ревности глотает.
А счастье катится, как обруч золотой,
Чужую волю исполняя,
И ты гоняешься за легкою весной,
Ладонью воздух рассекая.
И так устроено, что не выходим мы
Из заколдованного круга.
Земли девической упругие холмы
Лежат спеленатые туго.
«I have no use for regimental odes, / Or the impassioned elegiac hoax. / I make my verses quite beside the point / Made by the just, plain folks. / I wish you knew the kind of garbage heap / Wild verses grow on, paying shame no heed, / Like dandelions yellowing a fence, / Like burdock a...»
«They're not my kind who left the land / To enemies and plundering. / I do not heed their vulgar praise. / My songs are not for them to sing. But I ever do I grieve for exiles, / Like inmates, like the nearly dead. / Dark is the road you wander, rovers, / As wormwood fills your foreign ...»
«Night. Streetlamp. Street. The chemist's store. / A world in dingy, sleazy light. / Survive a quarter century more, / Nothing will change. Can't leave tonight. You'll die- and start the whole thing over. / The same old story will repeat: / Night. Icy rippling of the river. / Streetlamp...»
«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 ...»