Springtime doesn’t always resemble joy.
And the sand is yellow not because of the sunlight.
Your weather-beaten skin exuded
The rays of buckwheat-colored fuzz.
Near the sky-blue watering hole
Over the fields of prickly orache
We swore that we shall be two
And will never ever part.
Darkness puffed smoke, and the scrawny evening
Was curling up in fiery fretwork.
I walked with you until the grove
Where stood your parents’ cabin.
And for a long, long time in a hazy daydream
I could not turn my face away
When you were waving your hat from the porch
With a tender smile.
Весна на радость не похожа,
И не от солнца желт песок.
Твоя обветренная кожа
Лучила гречневый пушок.
У голубого водопоя
На шишкоперой лебеде
Мы поклялись, что будем двое
И не расстанемся нигде.
Кадила темь, и вечер тощий
Свивался в огненной резьбе,
Я проводил тебя до рощи,
К твоей родительской избе.
И долго, долго в дреме зыбкой
Я оторвать не мог лица,
Когда ты с ласковой улыбкой
Махал мне шапкою с крыльца.
«The muffled sound of the fruit / that carefully broke from a branch, / amid the incessant chant / of the silence deep in the woods...»
«A basilica stands where Roman justice / judged another nation: displaying its nerves, / as joyful as Adam to have stood there first, / the light cross-vault plays with its muscles. / / But a secret scheme is revealed outside: / the strength of the saddling arches forestalls / the buck...»
«We live, but feel no land at our feet, / nor ten steps off any whisper of speech. / Where half a conversation finds enough lips, / it’s the Kremlin-Climber our thoughts are with. / His weighty fingers as greasy as worms, / true as a dumbbell tumble his words. / His laughing moustache i...»
«Read only what children would read, / and dream what children think matters; / once the great things lie scattered, / shake off grief and rise to your feet. Existence exhausts me to death — / oh nothing it owns is of worth. / But I love this desolate earth: / I’ve never known any pl...»