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.
«6 The rest of you can eat me up / I just record your behaviour! / For you they’ll find dining tables / to lay you out This desk for me! Because I’ve been happy with little / there are foods I’ve never tasted. / The rest of you dine slowly. / You’ve eaten too much and too often....»
«The bus jumped, like a brazen / evil spirit, a demon / cutting across the traffic / in streets as cramped as footnotes, / it rushed on its way shaking / like a concert-hall vibrating / with applause. And we shook in it! / Demons too. Have you seen / seeds under a tap? We were / lik...»
«When I look at the flight of the leaves in / their floating down on to the paving of cobbles / and see them swept up as if by an / artist who has finished his picture at last I think how (already nobody likes either / the way I stand, or my thoughtful face) / a manifestly yellow, decidedl...»
«Morning and evening, darkness and light — / Fishermen black and fishermen white. / The world’s like an ocean; like fishes are we, / Like fishes that swim in the depths of the sea. The world’s like an ocean where fishermen wait, / Preparing their nets, their hooks and their bait. / H...»