O Time, you pursue me with legions of terrors
With painful disclosure, disfavour, dismay;
Today you denounce me for Yesterday's errors
And smash my delusions like castles of clay.
Who knew that old truths were so easily shaken?
Then why do you laugh at me, why such unkindness?
I erred in the things in which you were mistaken,
Repeating your words in my rapturous blindness!
Ты, время, вступаешь со мной врукопашную,
Пытаешь прозреньем, караешь презреньем,
Сегодня клеймишь за ошибки вчерашние
И крепости рушишь — мои заблужденья.
Кто знал, что окажутся истины зыбкими?
Чего же смеешься ты, мстя и карая?
Ведь я ошибался твоими ошибками,
Восторженно слово твое повторяя!
«You are ready from gloom to suicide, / Hang yourself, or shoot in the mouth. / Wait a while — and the spring will come to your side / After just three more snowy months. Nightingales of the cherry will whistle, / Full of nightingales cherry will stand. / May go past you the shot from th...»
«In these miniature Russian colonies / Those who are hiding from lawlessness / Their sinful bodies and souls, / Interests are so pitiful / Feelings vicious and hypocritical: / They seek only food and warmth. They all eat — it is only appropriate, / And the warmth in our time is import...»
«O you the ancient rhymes and rhythms, / Seized on by many poets, / The banal, cheap, and puny ones, / Cliches overcooked and boiled! / You sound with the guitar strings, / With rhythms and rhyme impoverished, / Than all new things more beautiful / To my simplistic soul! You were under...»
«I know nothing, I trust in nothing, / I no longer in life see its brighter side. / I approach my friend as if he were a lion / I need nothing else. I am bored and tired. Someone knifes someone, smothers another.. / Everywhere, cheating, lying and greed. / Would eyes not see and would ears...»