Our court nightingale,
beak open wide,
can let out the loudest
trills in the world.
The creature is stunning
by what pours from his throat –
but it was he who spurred
Derzhavin to write
that praise and flattery
are by no means the same:
a slave can flatter
but he can’t do praise.
Придворный соловей
Раскроет клюв пошире,
Бросая трель с ветвей,
Крикливейшую в мире.
Не помнит божья тварь
Себя от изумленья,
Долбит, как пономарь,
Хваленья и моленья.
Свистит что было сил,
По всей гремя державе,
О нем и говорил
Язвительный Державин,
Что раб и похвалить
Кого-либо не может.
Он может только льстить,
Что не одно и то же.
«Shakespeare’s play, his twenty-fourth — / Time is writing it impassively. / By the leaden river what can we, / Who know what such feasts are, / Do, except read Hamlet, Caesar, Lear? / Or escort Juliet to her bed, and christen / Her death, poor dove, with torches and singing; / Or p...»
«What does a certain woman know / about the hour of her death? / — Osip Mandelstam Tallest, most elegant of us, why does memory / Insist you swim up from the years, pass / Swaying down a train, searching for me, / Transparent profile through the carriage-glass? / Were you angel or bird...»
«I thought I knew all the paths / And precipices of insomnia, / But this is a trumpet-blast / And like a charge of cavalry. / I enter an empty house / That used to be someone’s home, / It’s quiet, only white shadows / In a stranger’s mirrors swim. / And what is that in a mist? ...»
«But I warn you, / I am living for the last time. / Not as a swallow, not as a maple, / Not as a reed nor as a star, / Not as water from a spring, / Not as bells in a tower — / Shall I return to trouble you / Nor visit other people’s dreams / With lamentation. »