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.
«The restaurants on hot spring evenings / Lie under a dense and savage air. / Foul drafts and hoots from drunken revelers / Contaminate the thoroughfare. / / Above the dusty lanes of suburbia / Above the tedium of bungalows / A pretzel sign begilds a bakery / And children screech for...»
«In the church choir a girl was singing About all the weary people in a strange land About all the ships far out on oceans About all who were forgetting the joys at hand. High in the steeple her voice was singing, A thin ray turning her shoulder white . From the dark everyone watched a...»
«Far up in empty mountains I met a shepherd Blowing low notes on a long alpine horn. Flowing pleasantly and loud, both song And horn were merely instruments for waking A more captivating mountain melody. Each time, after a few notes, the shepherd listened As the echo traveled back through narro...»
«Two wires are wrapped together, / The loose ends naked, exposed / A yes and no, not united, / Not united, but juxtaposed. / A dark, dark juxtaposition — / So close together, dead. / But resurrection awaits them; / And they await what waits ahead. / End will meet end in touching / ...»