Don’t seduce me into captivity,
Don’t entice me with hearth and home,
Don’t immure me living and breathing
Inside four walls.
There’s no chamber for which a poet
Would exchange her homelessness, –
That’s why the cuckoo cuckoos
That she hasn’t got a nest.
Ты уютом меня не приваживай,
Не заманивай в душный плен,
Не замуровывай заживо
Меж четырех стен.
Нет палаты такой, на какую
Променял бы бездомность поэт, —
Оттого-то кукушка кукует,
Что гнезда у нее нет.
«The embers fade. A lucid flame / flickers in the half-light, / like a butterfly’s azure wing / on a scarlet poppy. A scattering of motley visions / soothes my tired eyes. / Faces I can’t quite distinguish / gaze from the grey ash. Past happiness and sadness rise – / a friendly,...»
«Whispers, timid breathing, / trills of a nightingale, / the silver and the shiver / of a sleepy rill. Pale light and nighttime shadows, / shadows without end, / all the magic transformations / ...»
«Look, outside my window the vine is spreading so fast it / almost blocks out the light. Dark, picturesque green now / covers up half of the panes. And amidst the foliage a bunch of / seemingly carefully-placed grapes has started to turn / yellow... Hands off, sweetest! Why this rage for dest...»
«I’ll say nothing whatever to you, / I’ll not trouble you with it one bit, / And of thoughts harped upon all day through, / I don’t dare give the tiniest hint. All day sleeping, the night flowers curl, / But when dusk past the grove drops and looms, / In soft silence the leaves all u...»