My beloved! My tricky demon!
You’re so bony, that if you please
A cannibal eating you for luncheon,
Would break his teeth while he was crunchin’.
But I am not from such a rude breed
(And anyways a little toothless),
So therefore, without being an annoyance
I’ll eat you with my lips.
Моя любовь! Мой демон шалый!
Ты так костлява, что, пожалуй,
Позавтракав тобой в обед,
Сломал бы зубы людоед.
Но я не той породы грубой
(К тому ж я несколько беззуба),
А потому, не теребя,
Губами буду есть тебя!
«A cardboard box of sugared orange — / My little garret. / No need to trudge through dingy lodgings / To the mortuary! I moved again into this room — / From superstition. / The paper on the walls is brown, / The door is singing. I h...»
«They bring a bouquet of thistles / And put it on the table. / Before me, a fire, a turmoil. / The purple dance of flames. / These sharp-pointed stars, / These splashes of northern lights. / Tambourines thunder and moan. / Lanterns burst from inside. / This too is a way of making worl...»
«In broad-brimmed hats, wearing long coats, / With notebooks full of your poems, / You have scattered long since into dust / Like branches of dry lilac. You are in the country without ready-made shapes, / Where all is disjointed, mixed up, broken, / Where instead of the sky there is o...»
«Time’s river in its rushing course / carries away all human things, / drowns in oblivion’s abyss / peoples and kingdoms and their kings. And if the trumpet or the lyre / should rescue something, small or great, / eternity will gulp it down / and it will share the common fate.»