Azure space is aflame up above,
I've forgotten my home destination...
For the first time I'm singing of love,
For the first time I give up contention.
I was all like a desolate grove
Loving women and heavily drinking.
I don"t drink any more and don't love
Like I did, living fast and unthinking.
All I want is to look at the vast
Of your gold-brown eyes, and, — oh, bother! —
How I wish that, disliking your past,
You would not like to go to another!
Gentle step, graceful waist that you have!
Oh if only you wer' able to tumble
How a bully can really love,
And how he can be timid and humble!
All those pubs I would never attend,
And my poems would all be forgotten,
If you let me take hold of your hand
And your hair, the colour of autumn.
I would follow you ever, my dove,
Be it distant or close destination...
For the first time I'm singing of love,
For the first time I give up contention.
Заметался пожар голубой,
Позабылись родимые дали.
В первый раз я запел про любовь,
В первый раз отрекаюсь скандалить.
Был я весь как запущенный сад,
Был на женщин и зелие падкий.
Разонравилось пить и плясать
И терять свою жизнь без оглядки.
Мне бы только смотреть на тебя,
Видеть глаз златокарий омут,
И чтоб, прошлое не любя,
Ты уйти не смогла к другому.
Поступь нежная, легкий стан,
Если б знала ты сердцем упорным,
Как умеет любить хулиган,
Как умеет он быть покорным.
Я б навеки забыл кабаки
И стихи бы писать забросил,
Только б тонко касаться руки
И волос твоих цветом в осень.
Я б навеки пошел за тобой
Хоть в свои, хоть в чужие дали...
В первый раз я запел про любовь,
В первый раз отрекаюсь скандалить.
«I fell in love with you one amber day / When, born in azure glow / From every twig, its thanks to say, / Warm languor trickling would flow. White as hop blooms, lake waves foamed and rolled, / So white their bodies fair. / The laughing Lel the love-god pulled / The sunbeams of black hai...»
«Oh, how I loved you, land that bore me, / My Russia, freedom’s motherland, / When under whip you languished sorely, / Stayed silent did your people grand. Your faith was wild and quite unseeing, / For resurrection long your wait! / And now that prison’s gates are freeing, / I see yo...»
«No more Europe, no more America. / The end of Tsarskoye, of Moscow, too. / A fit of nuclear hysteria – / life atomized into a radiant blue. Transparent, all-forgiving haze will stretch / over the seas. And he who could have done / something yet chose not to, will be left / in the expa...»
«You took me – / I was sullen, without affection, / with only black thoughts / and convict ravings / and a widow’s unhealed anguish / and a past love that wasn’t past / You took me as a wife – / not for joy’s sake, / not of your own accord / but out of love.»