Flowers bid goodbye to me,
Bowing their heads ever lower,
A sign that her face and my homeland
I am never more to see.
Be it so, my love! God bless!
You and earth my sight delighted.
I accept like a caress
This death-tremor and this silence.
And because I fully grasp
Life entire and, smiling, greet it,
I vow — from the first to last
All in it can be repeated.
When a new man comes along,
Grief shall not consume the loser,
He shall sing a better song
Than the old one she was used to.
As she hears the melody
With her lover of that hour,
Maybe she’ll remember me —
An inimitable flower.
Цветы мне говорят — прощай,
Головками склоняясь ниже,
Что я навеки не увижу
Ее лицо и отчий край.
Любимая, ну, что ж! Ну, что ж!
Я видел их и видел землю,
И эту гробовую дрожь
Как ласку новую приемлю.
И потому, что я постиг
Всю жизнь, пройдя с улыбкой мимо, —
Я говорю на каждый миг,
Что все на свете повторимо.
Не все ль равно — придет другой,
Печаль ушедшего не сгложет,
Оставленной и дорогой
Пришедший лучше песню сложит.
И, песне внемля в тишине,
Любимая с другим любимым,
Быть может, вспомнит обо мне
Как о цветке неповторимом.
«I sit in my room round and tiny / Awashed by the light from above, / Look up at the stuccoed skyline / Dawn-dusked by a sixty watt sun. My things, lit as well, they surround me: / The chairs, the table, the bed. / I pause, hands confused, where to hide them? / My thoughts race, unravel ...»
«Brightly lit from above I am sitting / in my circular room; this is I — / looking up at a sky made of stucco, / at a sixty-watt sun in that sky. All around me, and also lit brightly, / all around me my furniture stands, / chair and table and bed--and I wonder / sitting there what to d...»
«(An epigram to a silhoette ) From rooftop to rooftop a rope is tied taut. / Upon it, an acrobat's fame is sought. A stick in his hands, he's at ease, like a scale / The spectators lean, strain their necks, "Will he fail?" The crowds shove, whisper, "Look, look, he might fall..." / The hustl...»
«(Stray hint) Like nebula you were obscured, / A glimmer in the moonlit heights, / In glowing flesh, embodied lure — / You now appear before my sight. Engaged in proper conversation / With a bewildered look I lift / A long, thin hair in hesitation — / Stray hint, which on my shoulde...»