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!
«At the peep o day in the lift forgether / bonnie cloods like a steepled toun, / wi mony a dome like a bubble o gowd / and white roofs and white waas blinterin doun. O yon is my ain white city — / or I came to the earth I bade there! / abune the derk warld quhile it sleeps / in the rei...»
«Poor poet, was that really you, / addressing the moon in rhyme? / My eyes were dulled so long ago / by love, by cards and wine. The moon climbs through the window frame. / White light, so white it blinds you... / I bet on the Queen of Spades, / but I played the Ace of Diamonds.»
«Grant me years of sickness and fever; / make me sleepless for months at a time. / Take away my child and my lover / and the mysterious gift of rhyme. / As the air grows ever more sultry, / this is the prayer I recite: / and may the storm cloud over my country / be shot through with ray...»
«“You are with me once more, Autumn my friend!” / Annensky Let any, who will, still bask in the south / On the paradisal sand, / It’s northerly here — and this year of the north / Autumn will be my friend. I’ll live, in a dream, in a stranger’s house / Where perhaps I have di...»