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!
«The more the autumn wind is wicked / And the moon desperate, — / The merrier we, vagrants, get / With a bottle of wine. We wandered the whole day through / The field, with a sleuth and a rifle… / We are comrades — nothing more — / Unacknowledging sorrow. What is love? Rapture, ...»
«We create cities from boulders, / Appreciate clear thoughts and precise numbers, / And it is unpleasant and strange for the soul / When the wind drawls a bleak meaningless song. Or the sea laps noisily. Neither hope, nor desire, / All that is precious to us, will not find an answer in them....»
«In the green church beyond the hill, / Where the willows dropped their rosaries, / I commemorate with the prosphora / Of juvenile spring the tales of youth. And you, bowing down / In front of me, stand invisibly, / The silks of lowered eyelashes / Make the wings of cherubim flap. Your ...»
«Fog covered the distance, / The moon combs the clouds. / Red evening behind the fish string / Spreads a curly drag net. Under the window, the wind / Oversang through slippy willows. / Quiet gloom, a warm angel, / Slaked by foreign light. The izba’s slumber, effortlessly, sows / Par...»