No, today I do not want you,
Memory, so just hold your tongue,
You vainglorious procuress,
Don’t procure me anyone.
Don’t seduce me down dark alleys,
To the places left behind –
To the bold or to the timid
Lips I’ve kissed so many times.
Sacrilegiously inspired,
I have ploughed my heart soil up, –
Rooting out the names of lovers
From my sacred calendars.
Не хочу тебя сегодня.
Пусть язык твой будет нем.
Память, суетная сводня,
Не своди меня ни с кем.
Не мани по темным тропкам,
По оставленным местам
К этим дерзким, этим робким
Зацелованным устам.
С вдохновеньем святотатцев
Сердце взрыла я до дна.
Из моих любовных святцев
Вызываю имена.
«Mist climbs from the lake. / Fields bare after harvest. / Beyond blue hills / the sun rolls to its rest. Splintered, deep in ruts, / the weary road thinks / it cannot be long now / till grey-haired winter. In the misty, resonant grove / I watched yesterday / as a bay moon, like a f...»
«The sower walks down the even furrows; / his fathers all furrowed the path he follows. The young seed glitters gold in his hand, / but it must fall into the black ground. There, amid the tunnels of the blind worm, / it will die on its due day – and grow again. So now my soul treads the pa...»
«At the peep o day in the lift forgether / bonnie cloods like a steepled toun, / wi mony a dome like a bubble o gowd / and white roofs and white waas blinterin doun. O yon is my ain white city — / or I came to the earth I bade there! / abune the derk warld quhile it sleeps / in the rei...»
«Poor poet, was that really you, / addressing the moon in rhyme? / My eyes were dulled so long ago / by love, by cards and wine. The moon climbs through the window frame. / White light, so white it blinds you... / I bet on the Queen of Spades, / but I played the Ace of Diamonds.»