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.
«...And I simply wouldn’t come near it, / Renouncing all earthly goods. / “This place’s” guardian spirit / Became a snag in the woods. In this life, we are all merely guests, / Life, itself, is a habit, no doubt. / I can hear, in the aerial jets, / Two voices conversing aloud. O...»
«On hearing thunder, you’ll recall my face, / You’ll think: She wished for storms and lightning... / The skyline of hard-crimson will be widening, / The heart will be, as it was then, — ablaze. / It’ll happen on some Moscow day like this, / I’ll leave this city far behind for good...»
«Confusion I The burning light was stifling, / His glances – like the rays. / I only shuddered slightly: / This one can tame my ways. / He’ll lean in, speaking, brazen… / I’m pale, out of fright. / Let love become the gravestone / That lies upon my life.»
«Confusion II Don’t love me, don’t wish to see me? / So handsome, and cursed all the while! / And now, I can’t even fly freely, / Though I’ve always had wings as a child. / The fog fills my eyes with clouds, / Things and faces are fused, all in all, / Just a single small tulip s...»