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?
«O, by every wind / Shaken lotus! / George's shyness, / George's kindness... The childish — severe — deadly importance / Of gigantic eyes / Wide and moist. Thus deadly torment / From the rags peers. / And the excessive / Weight of a spear Not here — with a proud / Laugh,...»
«With thorn, not with laurel / As a king crowned, / In a saddle — with wings! Around the shape narrow / On the black velvet / Maltese gold is. Unbreakable thorn / Needles — a vow / To friend and God. High bending / Of a swan, on the side / A Maltese sword. The knight of Mal...»
«Blessed are the ones that left your daughters, Earth, / To fight in wartime battle and to run, / Blessed are the ones that having never tried / Comfort went to the fields Elysian. Thus grows the laurel - writer of the years, / Heater of battle, sober, with harsh leaves. / I will never exc...»
«Already gods' — not the same generosity, / Upon the river's shore, not the same one. / Fly, fly again, the doves of Aphrodite / Into wide open gates of setting sun. I'll leave in day, in which there is no count, / Lying upon the sand that's growing cold... / I've outgrown my youth and l...»