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!
«I was not here for hundreds years, / But nothing changed for ages here… / In the same way the divine lyre / Pours bliss from the eternal crests. Same are the waters and stars’ throngs, / And endless bleakness of skies’ domes, / And flying seeds in airy flows, / And mothers sing th...»
«When, in the night, I wait for her, impatient, / Life seems to me, as hanging by a thread. / What just means liberty, or youth, or approbation, / When compared with the gentle piper's tread? And she came in, threw out the mantle's edges, / Declined to me with a sincere heed. / I say to he...»
«Muse went away by the road, / The autumnal, narrow, steep, / And her swarthy feet were slopped, / With large drops of dew in her slip. I begged her, with hope and fear, / To stay till the winter’s white lace, / She answered, “There is a grave here, / How can you still breathe in su...»
«Something of heavens ever burns in it, / I like to watch its wondrous facets' growth. / It speaks with me in fate's non-seldom fits, / When others fear to approach close. When the last of friends had looked away / From me in grave, it lay to me in silence, / And sang as sing a thunderstor...»