O Lake Saimaa, you beautiful maiden, my boat you were swaying,
Swayed the lively and spirited skiff that like arrow was sharpened,
Heard a lullaby’s bliss did my soul in the watery spraying,
Saw away in the distance, like sisters, deserted escarpments.
Kalevala’s primordial refrains they were everywhere playing:
Hewn in iron and in boulder, a song of titanium’s lustre.
And a sandbank, as if it were cut by an evening shaft straying,
On a water mill’s purple gleamed bride with a virginal bluster.
Silent arrows were falling as if from a drunken sun’s spinning
To the depths they descended, and silent, the depths they ignited,
As an overripe apple, from tree of the garden’s beginning,
And too dazzling the sun was as stars in the heavens were lighted.
Having landed my boat on the silver lush beach I was walking;
Quite how long and to whom I was praying I cannot remember…
Boundless Saimaa with torrents of lava appeared to be stalking,
Vapour settled and billowed white silent on surface’s ember.
О, красавица Сайма, ты лодку мою колыхала,
Колыхала мой челн, челн подвижный, игривый и острый.
В водном плеске душа колыбельную негу слыхала,
И поодаль стояли пустынные скалы, как сестры.
Отовсюду звучала старинная песнь — Калевала:
Песнь железа и камня о скорбном порыве Титана.
И песчаная отмель — добыча вечернего вала, —
Как невеста, белела на пурпуре водного стана.
Как от пьяного солнца бесшумные падали стрелы
И на дно опускались и тихое дно зажигали,
Как с небесного древа клонилось, как плод перезрелый,
Слишком яркое солнце — и первые звезды мигали,
Я причалил и вышел на берег седой и кудрявый;
Я не знаю, как долго, не знаю, кому я молился...
Неоглядная Сайма струилась потоками лавы,
Белый пар над водою тихонько вставал и клубился.
«The boy said me: “how painful it is!” / And I feel guilty somehow. / Not long ago, he was living in bliss / And knew no sadness till now. But at this moment he surely knows sorrow / No less than the wise and the old. / It seems that his eyes have begun to grow narrow, / And their on...»
«The Polish church’s lofty vaults / Are bluer than the skies… / O, merry boy, it’s all my fault, / I’ve brought you your demise. — For all the roses from the garden, / For all you’ve written of, / For you, so dark and ardent, / Turned dull and pale from love. I thought: it...»
«To M. Lozinsky This heavy, amber day — it wouldn’t end! / Grief is impossible, and waiting won’t suffice! / The deer speaks with a silver voice again / In the menagerie about the northern lights. I, too, believed that there exists cool snow, / A blue font for the needy and unwell, / ...»
«To O. A. Glebova-Sudeikina As you stare at the wall, what is catching your eye, / In the hour, when sunset still hangs in the sky? A gull on the blue tablecloth of the sea, / Or is it Florentine gardens, is that what you see? Perhaps the Tsar’s Village, with its enormous old park, / Where...»