At moment’s blooming I was not then questing,
Cassandra, for your lips, Cassandra, for your eyes,
But we’re December’s solemn wait digesting –
We’re hounded by our memories’ lies.
In 1917 in mid-December
We find we’ve lost love and it all;
The people’s will will some of us dismember,
And others hold themselves to wall.
And time will come in city’s madness
Amidst some Scythian orgy on the river bank
And in the dancing din and out of badness
From lovely head they’ll grab scarf with a yank.
If necessary madness is our mortal meaning
And high constructions make an ocean full of trees,
I fell for you, disarming victory’s overweening
And plague is borne by winter breeze.
And on the square I see a fellow,
Amidst the armoured cars he scares
The wolves, as chucking burning blocks he issues bellow
That freedom, law and right are theirs.
O sick and silent, dear Cassandra,
To understand this can’t be done.
Oh why shone sun of Alexander
A hundred years ago on everyone?
Я не искал в цветущие мгновенья
Твоих, Кассандра, губ, твоих, Кассандра, глаз,
Но в декабре торжественного бденья
Воспоминанья мучат нас.
И в декабре семнадцатого года
Всё потеряли мы, любя;
Один ограблен волею народа,
Другой ограбил сам себя…
Когда-нибудь в столице шалой
На скифском празднике, на берегу Невы —
При звуках омерзительного бала
Сорвут платок с прекрасной головы.
Но, если эта жизнь — необходимость бреда
И корабельный лес — высокие дома́, —
Я полюбил тебя, безрукая победа
И зачумлённая зима.
На площади с броневиками
Я вижу человека — он
Волков горящими пугает головнями:
Свобода, равенство, закон.
Больная, тихая Кассандра,
Я больше не могу — зачем
Сияло солнце Александра,
Сто лет тому назад сияло всем?
«The scarlet of the dawn has woven on the lake. / In the pine forest the wood grouse are crying with ringing. There is an oriole crying somewhere, having hidden in the hollow. / But only I cannot cry — it is light on my soul. I know, by evening you'll come out by the ring of roads, / We'll ...»
«The high waters have licked / The bed with smoke. / The half moon has dropped / Its yellow reigns. I'm sailing a boat, / Colliding with the banks. / The churches have / Orange spires by the spinning wheel. With gloomy chirping / In the silence of the swamps / A black wood grouse / ...»
«The birch tree / Below my window / Has covered herself with snow, / Like with silver. On the thick branches / With a snowy trim / Have bloomed the tassels / Of white fringes. And there stands the birch tree / In a sleepy silence, / And there burn the snowflakes / In the golden fi...»
«Silence. In the junipers atop the valley, / Autumn — a roam mare — rubs her mane for dressing. Well above the wooded river banks — / That's the dark blue clang her horseshoes make. Wind, a monk, walks past with wary footsteps / Holding back the foliage on the pathways, Kissing, when h...»