Drowsily an aged pine
rustles in her sleep.
Leaning on her coarse-grained trunk
Here I stand and speak.
«little pine-tree, just my age,
Give me of your strength!
Not the usual nine months,
forty years I carried,
forty years I had been bearing,
forty years I had been begging,
begged my heart out, got by pleading,
brought to term
my soul.»
Дремлет старая сосна
И шумит со сна.
Я, к шершавому стволу
Прислонясь, стою.
— Сосенка-ровесница,
Передай мне силу!
Я не девять месяцев, —
Сорок лет носила,
Сорок лет вынашивала,
Сорок лет выпрашивала,
Вымолила, выпросила,
Выносила
Душу.
«We live, not feeling the country beneath us, / Our speech inaudible ten steps away, / But where they're up to half a conversation — / They'll speak of the Kremlin mountain man. His thick fingers are fat like worms, / And his words certain as pound weights. / His cockroach whiskers laugh...»
«An inexpressible sadness / Opened two huge eyes; / The flower-vase woke up / Sprinkling its crystal light. The whole room was drunk / With weariness — sweet medicine! / So diminutive a kingdom / To swallow up so much sleep. A little red wine, / A little sunlit may, / And — brea...»
«Let the names of flowery cities / Caress the ear with fleeting glory — / It is not Rome the city that’s immortal, / But man’s presence in the universe. Kings try to get man in their power, / Priests find excuses for their wars, / And yet without him hearths and altars / Like wretc...»
«‘I have lost a delicate cameo / By the Neva’s bank, I don’t know where. / I’m grieving for my lovely Roman girl’ — / Almost in tears you came and said to me. But why, beautiful Georgian, / Disturb the dust of godlike tombs? / Another downy snowflake now / Has melted on your ...»