I, a butterfly that has flown
into the room of human life,
must leave the handwriting of my dust
like a prisoner’s signature
over the stern windows,
across fate’s strict panes.
The wallpaper of human life
is grey and sad.
And there is the windows’
transparent ‘No’.
I have worn away my deep-blue morning glow,
my patterns of dots,
my wing’s light-blue storm, first freshness.
The powder’s gone, the wings have faded
and turned transparent and hard.
Jaded, I beat
against the window of mankind.
From the other side knock eternal numbers,
summoning me to the motherland,
asking one single number
to return to all numbers.
Мне, бабочке, залетевшей
В комнату человеческой жизни,
Оставить почерк моей пыли
По суровым окнам,
На стеклах рока.
Так серы и скучны обои из мертвых растений
Человеческой жизни; пылью своей
Быть живописцем себя
На стеклах рока, большеокого рока.
Вдруг увидать открытую дверцу
В другой мир, где пение птиц и синий сквозняк,
Где мило всё, даже смерть
В зубах стрекозы.
О, улетевшая прочь пыль
И навсегда полинявшие крылья!
Окон прозрачное «нет»,
За ними шелест и пляска
Бабочек любви стучится.
Пляшет любовь бабочек высоко в ветре.
Я уже стер свое синее зарево и точек узоры
Вдоль края крыла.
Скучны и жестоки мои крылья,
Пыльца снята. Навсегда.
Бьюсь устало в окно человека.
Ветка цветущих чисел
Бьется через окно
Чужого жилища.
«From my poor sins I am set free. / In lilac dusk the taper smolders; / The dark stole's rigid drapery / Conceals a massive head and shoulders. "Talitha kumi": Is it He / Once more? How fast the heart is beating . . . / A touch: a hand moves absently / The customary cross repeating.»
«Broad gold, the evening colors glow, / The April air is cool and tender. / You should have come ten years ago, / And yet in welcome I surrender. Come here, sit closer in our nook, / And turn gay eyes at what my nurses / Might never glimpse: the blue-bound book / That holds my awkward ch...»
«Give me comfortless seasons of sickness, / Visitations of wrath and of wrong / On my house; Lord, take child and companion, / And destroy the sweet power of song. Thus I pray at each matins, each vespers, / After these many wearying days, / That the storm-cloud which broods over Russia / ...»
«Our sacred craft / Has existed for thousands of years. / With it, even without the sun, the world is bright. / But so far not one single poet has said / That there is no wisdom, no old age, / And that perhaps there is no death.»