She stands there with a sly expression, smiling.
Holding a huge scroll in her marble hands.
She notes life, death, and fame in her compiling,
Records all time, all people in all lands.
And she (who’s not to blame) gets bored and weary
With fates of slaves, chiefs, races, patriarchs.
But recently a curly-bearded, cheery
Wise man smiled up at her — a Karl Marx.
She stepped down swiftly from the pedestal:
"I beg you! Come up! I’m so tired of all
This writing, not knowing what links the chain!
In the museums and the libraries
I’ll find a home. But human destinies
And their untangling aren’t for a girl’s brain."
Она стоит с улыбкой лукавой
И держит свиток мраморный в руках,
Внося в анналы жизнь, и смерть, и славу,
Мелькающие средь людей в веках.
И скучно ей, ничуть не виноватой
В судьбе рабов, вождей, племен и рас.
Но вот мудрец кудряво-бородатый
Недавно улыбнулся ей, Карл Маркс.
Она сошла проворно с пьедестала:
"Прошу! Влезайте! Я ведь так устала
Записывать, не знаю что к чему!
В музеях и библиотеках
Найду приют! А судьбы человека
Разгадывать не девичью уму!"
«No holly bush is here; no ancient yew tree; / Strange stones embedded in the salt marsh stand, / And rusted by the sun, the cypresses, / Like swords erect and planted in the sand. And underneath the slender crowns of cypress, / Deep in the earth beneath the flagstones laid, / In order by ...»
«All through his life he drew the scenes of war. / One starless night, he hit a mine at dawn / And traveled to the bottom with the ship, / His final picture incompletely drawn. All through his life, they came to him for cures, / He fought a furious battle against death / And died, from sel...»
«to Valentina Serova You used to say to me "I love you!", / But that was through your teeth, at night, / The truth was "I put up with you". / — You almost said it in the light. I could believe your lips in darkness, / The wicked magic of your bed, / But though the words you spoke were h...»
«to Valentina Serova The major brought the boy out on the gun; / His mother dead, unwept, no time for tears. / He was a child for whom the last ten days / In this world or the next will count as years. They brought him from the fortress, Brest-Litovsk, / Bullets had scarred and scratched th...»