Children of the city, withered faded flowers,
I love you for the completion that a dream empowers.
If only this forehead would smooth out from strain,
If only these eyes were not so sad and drained,
If only these bodies were not starved and thin,
How much joyful enmity would have surged within!
If these feet were only not all rickets-bent,
If beneath them only grass and greenery’s scent!
Children of the city, withered faded blooms,
Still a seed of beauty hides within your gloom.
Mid the clang of iron, the deafening of stone,
You are all the brighter, you are hope alone!
Городские дети, чахлые цветы,
Я люблю вас сладким домыслом мечты.
Если б этот лобик распрямил виски!
Если б в этих глазках не было тоски!
Если б эти тельца не были худы,
Сколько б в них кипело радостной вражды!
Если б эти ноги не были кривы!
Если б этим детям под ноги травы!
Городские дети, чахлые цветы!
Все же в вас таится семя красоты.
В грохоте железа, в глухоте камней
Вы одна надежда, вы всего ясней!
«Our street is covered in snow; over the / Snow runs the lilac dusk. Passing by, it / Merely glanced in the window and I knew I / Had loved it for a long time. I implored / The lilac dusk: “Visit me a while, stay / With me in my nook, do not dispel my / Old, old grief, share your own wi...»
«Without trace day has sunk. Turning yellow, the / Moon’s hazy disk, still shadowless, looks on the / Balcony, and in the despair of windows flung / Open are drearily white walls, already unseeing. This moment night begins. The clouds are so black. / I pity the evening’s last instant: al...»
«Does it not seem to you at times, when / Twilight walks through the house, that / Right here alongside us is another element. / In which we live quite differently? So softly there has shadow merged with / Shadow, and there such moments can occur, / That it is as though we penetrated / E...»
«The joyful day blazes... Amid the languid grass, / Everywhere are poppies in patches-like eager / Impotence, like lips filled with temptation / and Poison, like outspread wings of scarlet butterflies. The joyful day blazes... But the garden is both empty / And overgrown. It has long since f...»