1.
To live on an exposed peak,
To write uncomplicated sonnets....
Being sustained by the peasants
With bread, wine, and cutlets.
2.
To burn my ships, those behind and ahead,
To lie down, looking at nothing, in bed.
Drift into dreamless sleep and, for ken's sake,
Some one hundred years or so hence, awake.
1
Жить на вершине голой,
Писать простые сонеты...
И брать от людей из дола
Хлеб, вино и котлеты.
2
Сжечь корабли и впереди, и сзади,
Лечь на кровать, не глядя ни на что,
Уснуть без снов и, любопытства ради,
Проснуться лет чрез сто.
«I've bad a name ever since birth, / Cherished my own opinion... / Believe me, friends, I’m most averse / To pass into oblivion. It’s not that, when my body’s old, / I'll grudge the good earth having it. / My great love is inspiring life / In things that are inanimate. The river b...»
«To Rodam Amirejibi** I am taking you, Suliko, / Down the paths of memory’s maze / In the charmed land of long-ago / Where I lived in my youthful days. It was such a long time ago... / The Ukraine... How the sun then shone! / Through the wild steppe gallopped Makhno*** / Pointing stra...»
«There was a black cross on his chest / No engraving, no design, no patina: / A treasured heirloom charm / Bequeathed to this alien Italian. My Neapolitan boy what will be left / Of you here on the Russian fields? / Were you not happy enough / On that magnificent bay? I shot you dead ...»
«I sense no love or mirages, / Won't attach myself to mirth: / Bitter-fleeting, ever-rushing, / Are my joys on planet Earth. Like a child, finding pleasant / This fugacious, sweet game, / I'm contented with the present, / Cheery noons and murk the same.»