My unglorious day is waning,
Finally the end has come…
Oh, my ash-tree ice! My verses,
Light-transparent frigid ones!
I do not intend to leave my
Useless goods to anyone.
I shine up the crystal and the
Silver for myself alone.
And my icon lamp is burning,
Getting rosy from inside…
Well, and you who do not need it,
From my feast just hide your eyes…
It’s the arctic here. With reason
I keep warm as daylight wanes
With this secret heat, emitted
From a glassy-surfaced blaze.
На исходе день невзрачный,
Наконец, пришел конец...
Мой холодный, мой прозрачный,
Стих мой, лед-ясенец!
Никому не завещаю
Я ненужное добро.
Для себя лишь засвечаю
Хрустали и серебро, —
И горит моя лампада,
Розовея изнутри...
Ну а ты, кому не надо,
Ты на пир мой не смотри...
Здесь полярный круг. Недаром
Греюсь на исходе дня
Этим сокровенным жаром
Застекленного огня.
«Not long ago, when I was at a dinner, / I heard a toast — and here I write it down. "I had a dream" the speaker said to us / "That I had died, and yet I was not dead / And there before me lay a final road / On which I walked, with neither food nor fire. / An empty plain stretched out i...»
«It is as if my friends are marching / And I along with them, in time, / Through many different streets they're passing, / Those nearest, dearest friends of mine. They are not those with whom I started / And learned my letters, in my place, / Nor those with whom I shaved moustaches / Sti...»
«No holly bush is here; no ancient yew tree; / Strange stones embedded in the salt marsh stand, / And rusted by the sun, the cypresses, / Like swords erect and planted in the sand. And underneath the slender crowns of cypress, / Deep in the earth beneath the flagstones laid, / In order by ...»
«All through his life he drew the scenes of war. / One starless night, he hit a mine at dawn / And traveled to the bottom with the ship, / His final picture incompletely drawn. All through his life, they came to him for cures, / He fought a furious battle against death / And died, from sel...»