Where can I hide in this January?
Wide-open city with a mad death-grip...
Can I be drunk from sealed doors? —
I want to bellow from locks and knots...
And the socks of barking back roads,
and the hovels on twisted streets —
and deadbeats hurry into corners
and hurriedly dart back out again...
And into the pit, into the warty dark
I slide, into waterworks of ice,
and I stumble, I eat dead air,
and fevered crows exploding everywhere —
But I cry after them, shouting at
some wickerwork of frozen wood:
A reader! A councillor! A doctor!
A conversation on the spiny stair!
Куда мне деться в этом январе?
Открытый город сумасбродно цепок...
От замкнутых я, что ли, пьян дверей? —
И хочется мычать от всех замков и скрепок.
И переулков лающих чулки,
И улиц перекошенных чуланы —
И прячутся поспешно в уголки
И выбегают из углов угланы...
И в яму, в бородавчатую темь
Скольжу к обледенелой водокачке
И, спотыкаясь, мертвый воздух ем,
И разлетаются грачи в горячке —
А я за ними ахаю, крича
В какой-то мерзлый деревянный короб:
— Читателя! советчика! врача!
На лестнице колючей разговора б!
«Past one o’clock. You’re probably in bed / The Milky Way streams like the silver Oka / I won’t send wild telegrams. I don’t intend / to trouble you and vex you any longer / and now, as people say, our case is closed / the boat of love could not endure the grind / We’re even now...»
«In the realm of Threeteenseventy, / Commonwealth of Thriceleventy, / Lived the famous Tsar Dadon. / Fierce he was from boyhood on, / And when scarcely more than twenty / Wrought his neighbors wrongs aplenty. / Aging now, he changed in mind, / Would give up the warlike grind / For a l...»
«Sun is but one, yet it marches through all towns undone. / Sun is all mine. I shall give it away to no one, / / For a day, for a ray, for a glance. — To no one. Nevermore! / Let cities perish in dark endless night, I implore! / / I'll take the sun in my palms! I won't let it go round...»
«Sun — is one, but treads all over the cities, / Sun — is mine. I shan't give it to anybody. Not for an hour, for ray, nor for glance. — Nobody, never! / Then let cities vanish in the night unchangeable. I'll take it in hands! — To avoid its circling in round! / Besides of burning ...»