My body, all I borrowed from the earth,
I do not want it to return here —
some flour-white butterfly.
My body, scratched and chewed with thought,
I want it to become a street, a land —
it was too full of vertebrae.
The dark green pine needles howling in the wind
look like funeral wreaths thrown into the water...
how our pastimes and life were drained away!
when we sat like galley slaves at our gruelling benches —
bodies spread against a backdrop of green pine,
red flags colored like the A B C's s of a child!
The comrades of the last contingent are on the move;
no conversation; on their shoulders,
the exclamation points of rifles.
From the heights of the sky, a thousand guns,
brown eyes, blue eyes; no one sets the step — men, men, men!
Who will follow after them?
Не мучнистой бабочкою белой
В землю я заёмный прах верну —
Я хочу, чтоб мыслящее тело
Превратилось в улицу, в страну:
Позвоночное, обугленное тело,
Сознающее свою длину.
Возгласы тёмно-зелёной хвои,
С глубиной колодезной венки
Тянут жизнь и время дорогое,
Оперши́сь на смертные станки —
О́бручи краснознамённой хвои,
Азбучные, крупные венки!
Шли товарищи последнего призыва
По работе в жёстких небесах,
Пронесла пехота молчаливо
Восклицанья ружей на плечах.
И зенитных тысячи орудий —
Карих то зрачков иль голубых —
Шли нестройно — люди, люди, люди, —
Кто же будет продолжать за них?
«Endless downpour; misty wood; / Fir trees swaying: / “Oh, dear Lord!” — as if the wood were drunk, / Rain-sodden. At the window of the dark lodge / A child sits drumming with a spoon. / Mother sleeping soundly on the stove; / A calf lowing in the damp passage. / Gloomy lodge; bu...»
«Pallid young man with an ardent expression, / Listen, today I will give you three precepts. / Here is the first one: don’t live in the present, / Only the future is the sphere of the poet. Remember the second: have a feeling for no one, / Just for yourself nurture love which is boundless....»
«“Stonemason, stonemason, in your white apron, / What are you building? For whom?” / “Oh, don’t disturb us, for we’re busy working, / Building a prison — a tomb.” “Stonemason, stonemason, with your true trowel, / Who will be weeping inside?” / “Neither you nor your brot...»
«When they say to me: “Alexandria” — / I see the white walls of a house, / A smallish garden with beds of stocks, / The pale sun of an autumn sunset, / And I hear the sounds of distant flutes. When they say to me: “Alexandria” — / I see the stars above a retiring city, / Drun...»