Mother, blind, stares in the window;
Answering spring her wrinkles laugh.
But her heart is dedicated to ache,
With growing pain it beats in the sun.
We need neither light nor beauty!
We need no blessings from outside!
How my son in his distant exile
Counts the deathly hours in his cell.
Слепая мать глядит в окно,
Весне морщинками смеется.
Но сердце, горю отдано,
Больней на солнце бьется.
Не надо света и красы!
Не надо вешней благодати!
Считает мертвые часы
Мой сын в далеком каземате.
«By degrees we find we’re all departing / For the same serene and silent land. / And perhaps when soon that course I’m charting / Some possessions I will have to hand. Sweetest silver birches’ straggling covert! / Mother earth’s horizon’s sandy plain! / Hosts departing face me in...»
«Of mighty talent stand I musing, / Of one who stands for Russia’s fate, / Tverskóy Boulevard perusing, / I stand and with myself I prate. My hair is fair — there are few blonder — / They say that I’ve become like mist, / O Alexander! What a bounder! / And I’m delinquent — ...»
«As once I loved I really don’t. / Oh, yes, I know you’ll sorrow, sorrow / Because the sweeping moon now won’t / With verses overflow tomorrow. You’ll grieve, you’ll revel, star-wards roar — / It falls upon your brow so furrowed — / In hut your heart it did outpour, / But h...»
«Seems I’m doomed by my life to accept share of suffering; / Grief is wedded to weariness, blocking my path; / Torn it seems has my life been from playful rejoicing, / Aching heart’s been sore wounded by tiredness and sloth. Suffering seems an inheritance tied to my life; / Life is stric...»