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!
«for Osip Mandelstam All the town’s gripped in an icy fist. / Trees and walls and snow are set in glass. / I pick my timid way across the crystal. / Unsteadily the painted sledges pass. / Flocks of crows above St Peter’s, wheeling. / The dome amongst the poplars, green and pale in / ...»
«Nothing’s been taken away! / We’re apart — I’m delighted by this! / Across the hundreds of miles / that divide us, I send you my kiss. Our gifts, I know, are unequal. / For the first time my voice is still. / What, my young Derzhavin, do / you make of my doggrel? For your terri...»
«I dearly, dearly long to be with you, / to sit and chat with you, drink tea with you. You’d do the talking — I would be all ears; / your voice grows ever dearer with the years. You, too, knew grief and fury and disdain; / you, too, died slowly, slowly and in pain.»
«The smokey blotches of the neighbours’ windows, / and windswept roses bending, drawing breath — / if I could think that life is but a dream, / that we cannot help waking after death. To wait in heaven — heaven is so blue — / to wait in that cool bliss without a care. / And then, ...»