And truly, one cannot predict
Who in the world will be one’s reader:
A ball can’t know what it will hit
Once it’s shot into the distance.
Well, then, my life-creating verse,
Whom I breathe and in whom I live,
Fly off into darkness, into the void,
Or simply, into the secret drawer!
Our path was blocked at midpoint by
A cruel century. But we’re not complaining, –
Let it be! And yet, and in the main, it’s
A splendid thing, this century!
Perhaps it has no use for verse,
Or for names and patronymics,
Or for separate lonelinesses, –
Still, it kneads the mash of centuries!
И вправду, угадать хитро,
Кто твой читатель в мире целом:
Ведь пущенное в даль ядро
Не знает своего прицела.
Ну что же, — в темень, в пустоту.
— А проще: в стол, в заветный ящик —
Лети, мой стих животворящий,
Кем я дышу и в ком расту!
На полпути нам путь пресек
Жестокий век. Но мы не ропщем, —
Пусть так! А все-таки, а в общем
Прекрасен этот страшный век!
И пусть ему не до стихов,
И пусть не до имен и отчеств,
Не до отдельных одиночеств, —
Он месит месиво веков!
«The arboreal chapel was nearing closure. / Barely cleared his windpipe, the siskin. / A lone nightingale's unsilenced composure / Over the world rang from the foliage. The more I expelled you, insidious impulse, / The less I could look down at you laughing. / To silence yourself in the gl...»
«Wrapped in kisses and spells, in the plains, / With the wind you were one time wed, / You are seemingly covered in chains, / My invaluable woman friend! Neither happily nor stricken down, / From a dark sky you walk with gravity, / You are both the song of my wedding vow, / And my star s...»
«When, at the years' decline, my life will run its course / And, having dimmed the light, I will again disperse / Into the unseen world of foggy transformations, / When millions of newborn generations / Will fill this world with glimmerings of wonder / And will complete the nature's full de...»
«Every day behind the hill's brink / I disappear, dear friend. / Like a laboratory, spring / Lies across the vernal land. Within every little flower, / Like within a live retort, / Sunlit moisture gathers power / And evaporates skyward. Taking time through this to rummage, / With a le...»