I shall not lie to find a lurid rhyme,
Honoured master, no harsh words from you:
Since the cot your choice has not been mine,
I can only do what I can do.
How heartily I thank relentless Fate
For the prickly Muse that I’ve been given:
The path we walk is ours, though it be strait,
She and I aren’t fellow-travelling women.
Ради рифмы резвой не солгу,
Уж не обессудь, маститый мастер, —
Мы от колыбели разной масти:
Я умею только то, что я могу.
Строгой благодарна я судьбе,
Что дала мне Музу-недотрогу:
Узкой, но своей идем дорогой.
Обе не попутчицы тебе.
«It's dreadful! It drips and it listens: / Does nobody else in the world / Press branches, like lace, in a window' / Or is there...a witness? The ground is so swollen and smothered, / Too spongy, too heavy to breathe / But listen — far off, as in August — / How midnight grows ripe in...»
«Goldfinch, friend, I'll cock my head — / let's check the world out, just me and you: / this winter's day pricks like chaff; / does it sting your eyes too? Boat-tailed, feathers yellow-black, / sopped in colour beneath your beak, / do you get, you goldfinch you, / just how you flaunt i...»
«I can’t submit myself to man. / Who’d choose to be a slave? / We judge each other all life long — / and then? A lonely grave. I can’t submit myself to God, / because I love Him so. / For God has set me on this road — / where else am I to go? I tear the nets that bind mankind ...»
«No, I will never make my peace. / There’s truth in all my curses. / I won’t forgive, won’t throw myself / into the iron embraces. Like everyone, I’ll die, I’ll kill — / ruin myself, like everyone — / but I refuse to stain my soul / by justifying what goes on. When death i...»