Swimming in the blue dust,
The moon butts a cloud with its horn.
This night, no one will guess
Why the herons screamed.
This night, she ran through the reeds
To the green backwater.
Her white hand swept her tousled hair
Over her tunic.
She ran up, glanced at the quick spring
And sat down on the stump in pain.
In her eyes, the daisies wilted
The way a swamp light goes out.
At dawn, through the spiraling fog,
She swam away and vanished in the distance...
And the moon, swimming in the blue dust,
Nodded to her from behind the hill.
Месяц рогом облако бодает,
В голубой купается пыли.
В эту ночь никто не отгадает,
Отчего кричали журавли.
В эту ночь к зелёному затону
Прибегла она из тростника.
Золотые космы по хитону
Разметала белая рука.
Прибегла, в ручей взглянула прыткий,
Опустилась с болью на пенёк.
И в глазах завяли маргаритки,
Как болотный гаснет огонёк.
На рассвете с вьющимся туманом
Уплыла и скрылася вдали…
И кивал ей месяц за курганом,
В голубой купаяся пыли.
«On a bare hill's top, in the North, wild and cold, / A lone pine-tree somewhere stands; / She dozes, swaying, all covered by snow / With a mantel from feet to a head. She sees in her dreams: in a faraway desert, / In lands where the sun enters skies, / Alone and sad, on a rock's sunburn...»
«Not with the proud kind of beauty / She charms the animated youth, / And she doesn't drag behind her booty — / The crowd of her slaves, confused. Her waist isn't one of any goddess, / Her breast does not rise like sea waves, / And nobody calls her gorgeous, / While falling on his knee...»
«No, not with you I fell in love so fast, / And not for me your beauty is succeeding; / I love in you my suffering preceding, / And youth of mine, that perished in the past. And when sometimes my look is long and hard, / And penetrates your eyes of high perfection; / I'm busy with a secret...»
«No, I'm not Byron; I am, yet, / Another choice for the sacred dole, / Like him — a persecuted soul, / But only of the Russian set. / I early start and end the whole, / And will not win the future days; / Like in an ocean, in my soul, / A cargo of lost hopes stays. / Who, oh, my oce...»