They gave themselves to sad monotonous
tasks, until their strength was spent.
Half-dead among them, only I
distracted their predicament.
They looked at me and they forgot
their bubbling kettles boiling dry,
the boots of felt that scorched on stoves
— all listening to my poetry
Then in sepulchral Russian dark
a flowery herald-girl took my hand;
and music's concord was revealed
to me, knocked sideways in the wind.
Mad with visions, over the sheet-ice
on the canal, I'd reach the bank
and slither up the crumbling steps
clutching a piece of cod that stank,
and driving every verse through prose
disjointed in the pull and push,
somehow I grafted the classic rose
to the Soviet briar bush.
Напастям жалким и однообразным
Там предавались до потери сил.
Один лишь я полуживым соблазном
Средь озабоченных ходил.
Смотрели на меня — и забывали
Клокочущие чайники свои;
На печках валенки сгорали;
Все слушали стихи мои.
А мне тогда в тьме гробовой, российский.
Являлась вестница в цветах,
И лад открылся музикийский
Мне в сногсшибательных ветрах.
И я безумел от видений,
Когда чрез ледяной канал,
Скользя с обломанных ступеней,
Треску зловонную таскал,
И, каждый стих гоня сквозь прозу,
Вывихивая каждую строку,
Привил-таки классическую розу
К советскому дичку.
«To Maria Petrovna Maksakova Does winter really have thunderstorms / And sky that’s bluer than a blueprint? / I like your having eyes that slant, / And also that your soul is slanted. I like the headlong briskness of your gait, / The chilly feeling of your shoulders, / Your frivolous an...»
«My unglorious day is waning, / Finally the end has come… / Oh, my ash-tree ice! My verses, / Light-transparent frigid ones! I do not intend to leave my / Useless goods to anyone. / I shine up the crystal and the / Silver for myself alone. And my icon lamp is burning, / Getting rosy...»
«And truly, one cannot predict / Who in the world will be one’s reader: / A ball can’t know what it will hit / Once it’s shot into the distance. Well, then, my life-creating verse, / Whom I breathe and in whom I live, / Fly off into darkness, into the void, / Or simply, into the se...»
«People cut a hole through / The dark-blue thickness of ice: / An air vent for big fish and little, / Water for water hoistings, / A way out for a weary woman / If in the end life turned out / Not to be traveling her road, / If she had nowhere to go!»