Sergey Esenin
My love’s hands, just like a pair of swans...

My love’s hands, just like a pair of swans,
In my golden head of hair are plunging.
Everybody who to earth belongs
Sings of love, then sings again — of loving.

I too sang of love long, long ago,
Now again with that same theme I’m dealing.
For that reason deeply breathe and glow
Words that are imbued with tender feeling.

If the heart surrenders to love’s charm.
Love into a nugget will transform it.
But, I fear, the moon of Teheran
Sheds no heat to make the verses warmer.

I don’t know how now I ought to live:
Burn to ash in Shaganeh’s embraces,
Or grow old and many a sad sigh heave
For lost ardour and poetic graces?

Each thing to its proper place belongs:
What the ear esteems, the eye thinks worthless.
If a Persian pens inferior songs
It’s a sign Shiraz was not his birthplace.

When of me and my work you’re conversing,
Tell the people whom you move among:
He might well have written finer verses
But his downfall was a pair of swans.

Translated by Peter Tempest