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.
«I quivered. I flared up, and then was extinguished. / I shook. I had made a proposal — but late, / Too late. I was scared, and she had refused me. / I pity her tears, am more blessed than a saint. I stepped into the square. I could be counted / Among the twice-born. Every leaf on the ...»
«The muffled sound of the fruit / that carefully broke from a branch, / amid the incessant chant / of the silence deep in the woods...»
«A basilica stands where Roman justice / judged another nation: displaying its nerves, / as joyful as Adam to have stood there first, / the light cross-vault plays with its muscles. / / But a secret scheme is revealed outside: / the strength of the saddling arches forestalls / the buck...»
«We live, but feel no land at our feet, / nor ten steps off any whisper of speech. / Where half a conversation finds enough lips, / it’s the Kremlin-Climber our thoughts are with. / His weighty fingers as greasy as worms, / true as a dumbbell tumble his words. / His laughing moustache i...»