The law of the seesaw argues
that your shoes will be loose or tight,
that the hours will be day or night,
and the ruler of earth the rhinoceros
or us.
Закон качелей велит
Иметь обувь то широкую, то узкую.
Времени то ночью, то днем,
А владыками земли быть то носорогу, то человеку.
«Not long ago, when I was at a dinner, / I heard a toast — and here I write it down. "I had a dream" the speaker said to us / "That I had died, and yet I was not dead / And there before me lay a final road / On which I walked, with neither food nor fire. / An empty plain stretched out i...»
«It is as if my friends are marching / And I along with them, in time, / Through many different streets they're passing, / Those nearest, dearest friends of mine. They are not those with whom I started / And learned my letters, in my place, / Nor those with whom I shaved moustaches / Sti...»
«No holly bush is here; no ancient yew tree; / Strange stones embedded in the salt marsh stand, / And rusted by the sun, the cypresses, / Like swords erect and planted in the sand. And underneath the slender crowns of cypress, / Deep in the earth beneath the flagstones laid, / In order by ...»
«All through his life he drew the scenes of war. / One starless night, he hit a mine at dawn / And traveled to the bottom with the ship, / His final picture incompletely drawn. All through his life, they came to him for cures, / He fought a furious battle against death / And died, from sel...»