Let life torment, and the day lived
Trouble with echoes of bitter thoughts,
And sorrow gnaw the soul cunningly.
Look in the skies of night;
Where the starry dew falls,
Where the Milky Way, like a streak,
Has lain to multiply light with light;
Look humbly into the miracles —
And Eternity will tenderly destroy
In you the earthly voices,
Upon the eyes of sleepless memory
Will put a patch of murk;
A tear, instilled, shall not fall down,
An instant, wearied by the shorelessness!
The holy shorelessness that heals
All pain, all greed, all worry,
Imperiously taming hopelessness
With dreams of another kind of being!
The night, concealing not its secrets of creation,
Streaming the light of countless stars,
Proclaims that near us is the closeness
of other worlds, that there — are the edges,
Where there is love and tenderness as well,
And life and death — who knows to whom
Does it belong?
That the sky — only a frontier
of planetary spheres, the distance — a furrow,
That the congregating suns and our “I”
Draws the inevitable in space.
Пусть мучит жизнь, и день, что прожит,
Отзвучьем горьких дум тревожит,
И душу скорбь коварно гложет;
Взгляни в ночные небеса,
Где пала звездная роса,
Где Млечный Путь, как полоса,
Пролег и свет на светы множит;
Вглядись покорно в чудеса,—
И Вечность нежно уничтожит
В тебе земные голоса,
Бессонной памяти положит
Повязку мрака на глаза;
Застынет, не упав, слеза,
И миг в безбрежном изнеможет!
Целит священная безбрежность
Всю боль, всю алчность, всю мятежность,
Смиряя властно безнадежность
Мечтой иного бытия!
Ночь, тайн созданья не тая,
Бессчетных звезд лучи струя,
Гласит, что с нами рядом — смежность
Других миров, что там — края,
Где тоже есть любовь и нежность,
И смерть и жизнь,— кто знает, чья?
Что небо — только порубежность
Планетных сфер, даль — колея,
Что сонмы солнц и наше «я»
Влечет в пространстве — Неизбежность!
«In those days when new to me were / Of existence all impressions: — / The maiden's glances, the forests' whisper, / The song of nightingale at night; / When the sentiments elevated / Of Freedom, glory and of love, / And of art the inspiration / Stirred deeply so my blood: — / My ...»
«Like a dog on a chain the machine-gun / Barks out from beyond the wood; / Splinters of shrapnel are buzzing / Like bees as they forage for food. And that distant ‘Hurrah’, like the song of / The reapers, might tempt you to say / That this is some peaceful village / At the end of a f...»
«To M. M. Chichagov Like a dog that strains on heavy halter / Rifle yaps across the forest now, / Bee-like, buzzing shrapnel doesn’t falter, / Gathering bright red honey from the bough. In the distance, though, “Hurrah” is sounding / Like the reapers’ singing when they’re done. / ...»
«The machine gun barks behind the thicket / Like a dog upon a heavy chain, / And the shrapnel buzzes like bees, busy, / Bringing bright red honey home again. Far off the hurrahing is like singing / Reapers whose hard daily work is done. / You must say that it’s a peaceful village / As ...»