What an amazing time it was!
Me, in my twentieth year.
The fountain gushed up
like an arc of diamonds.
Poplar fluff tumbled down,
and kids were up from the crack of dawn
stamping around
the fountain in the lane,
and the world was immenser,
and the sky was deep-bluer,
and — released from dovecotes —
doves plunged into the sky…
And life was even lighter
than the poplar fluff —
and oh so terrifying and fun,
the way it took our breath away!
Прекрасная пора была!
Мне шел двадцатый год.
Алмазною параболой
взвивался водомет.
Пушок валился с тополя,
и с самого утра
вокруг фонтана топала
в аллее детвора,
и мир был необъятнее,
и небо голубей,
и в небо голубятники
пускали голубей...
И жизнь не больше весила,
чем тополевый пух, —
и страшно так и весело
захватывало дух!
«Yes, I’m a sailor! A wanderer of the seas, / In endless waves a seeker of strange isles. / I yearn for new hues in a different breeze, / New tongues and alien plateaus and defiles. And women come to my passionate pleas / Obedient, with but begging in their smiles! / As painful veils dro...»
«From droplets of dew that aquiver are throwing / The lustre of jewels around, / To the pallor of spaces, where, distantly flowing, / The wave of the ocean its foam-wreath is strowing / O'er seas that no plummet can sound, / Thou art everywhere, ever, life changelessly glowing, / Now emer...»
«My song-craft is filled with the trickle of springs, / And clearer and clearer it rings: / With the passionate whispers of love it is laden, / With the kisses bestowed by a maiden. The chillness of ice with my song-craft is blending, / The crystalline w...»
«I am choiceness of Russian, so stately of mien, / The poets before me my heralds have been, / I the first in this tongue subtle byways revealed, / Strains tuneful, and wrathful and wistful I wield. I, — a rending asunder, / I, — a sporting of thunder, / ...»