For four years on end
Immortal was I.
For four years on end
Light-hearted was I.
For I never knew I would die one fine day,
For I never knew I would not live for aye.
You who know how to make life sweet and pleasant,
Like children, immortal — believe not in death;
Death's time is the future — but never the present,
Though you may be breathing your very last breath.
Года четыре был я бессмертен,
Года четыре был я беспечен,
Ибо не знал я о будущей смерти,
Ибо не знал я, что век мой не вечен.
Вы, что умеете жить настоящим,
В смерть, как бессмертные дети, не верьте.
Миг этот будет всегда предстоящим —
Даже за час, за мгновенье до смерти.
«Sleep on a Summer’s Night / (Five Verses) 4 I hang inside the writer’s utensil / A large lustrous violet drop. Beneath the house — an enigmatic trench. / A hundredth part of the hard air / Is kindled by a puff of sizzling coke, / And scarcely has the merest daybreak been cut off /...»
«Sleep on a Summer’s Night / (Five Verses) 5 Drink and write, with a kerosene lamp, / Watching for patrols’ revving motors / In the street, with beer mug in hand / As you sip the July night away. The green-eyed thirsty giant! / Pickles spill over the poplar-wood table, / Petty hood...»
«Days spread out with distinct somberness. / The disconsolate brook flows along / In front of my entry hall porch door / Outside my window’s unblocked view. Outside the fence along the road / The public garden flows from its bank. / Sprawling down, like beasts from a lair, / Tumultuous...»
«Fame is unsightly, when one is alive. / It does nothing to raise one up. / One must not establish archives / Nor tremble over one’s manuscripts. The aim of creation — self-reflection, / Not hoopla, not grand success. / To be a parable on any old tongue / Is infamy and nothingness. ...»