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.
«I am no more that passioned lover, / Once the world's most marvelous face: / My spring and wondrous golden summer / Forever gone without a trace. / Oh Cupid, god of days of yore! / I was your faithful servant then; / If only to be born once more, / Oh how I'd serve you yet again!»
«Forth went the sower to sow his seeds... As freedom's sower in the wasteland / Before the morning star I went; / From hand immaculate and chastened / Into the grooves of prisonment / Flinging the vital seed I wandered — / But it was time and toiling squandered, / Benevolent designs mi...»
«Where is our rose, friends? / Tell if ye may! / Faded the rose, friends, / The Dawn-child of Day. / Ah, do not say, / Such is life’s fleetness! / No, rather say, / I mourn thee, rose, — farewell! / Now to the lily-bell / Flit we away.»
«To flourish amid the incessant hell / Of steps, now heavy, now loud, / And groaning pulleys and fumes, / And the clicking of billiard balls. To make love till a streak / Of blood red flares up in the East, / An hour, till a white kerchief / Copes with a scythe. To feed to Reproaches a...»