To E. K. Gertsyk
When the love of flesh fades,
So goes the desire to create.
Your fingers don’t long to handle clay
Or chisel shadows into marble.
Your song halts in mid-word,
The brush freezes in mid-stroke —
Surprise…how little they matter.
Farewell, farewell to you, sublime lust!
The spirit’s last lingering joy.
Е. К. Герцык
Кто разлюбляет плоть, хладеет к воплощенью:
Почти не тянется за глиною рука.
Уже не вылепишь ни льва, ни голубка,
Не станет мрамором, что наплывает тенью.
На полуслове — песнь, на полувзмахе — кисть
Вдруг остановишь ты, затем что их — не надо...
Прощай, прощай и ты, прекрасная корысть,
Ты, духа предпоследняя услада!
«The Russian bard since ancient times / Has yearned for countries strange and distant, / And most of all Caucasian climes / Have strangely lured with mist insistent. Here Pushkin, flamed with passion, wrote / With outcast’s lonely sad complaining: / "Do not, my beauty, single note / Of...»
«Mother dearest, is your heart still beating? / Mine is too, so greetings, Mum, to you! / And I hope that over home still fleeting / Evening light unspoken sheds its hue. Letters tell me you’re a little worried, / Seems my absence causes you distress, / They have seen you weeping as you...»
«By degrees we find we’re all departing / For the same serene and silent land. / And perhaps when soon that course I’m charting / Some possessions I will have to hand. Sweetest silver birches’ straggling covert! / Mother earth’s horizon’s sandy plain! / Hosts departing face me in...»
«Of mighty talent stand I musing, / Of one who stands for Russia’s fate, / Tverskóy Boulevard perusing, / I stand and with myself I prate. My hair is fair — there are few blonder — / They say that I’ve become like mist, / O Alexander! What a bounder! / And I’m delinquent — ...»