Vyacheslav Ivanov
Apollini

When Love waters your buried root
With springs of tears, and bleak gloom,
Like Death's canopy, by a magic grove
Where Dante wandered surrounds the living trunk —

You rise up with your proud heads,
O hymns, into the light, shining translucent over the crimson darkness
Of blue valleys, like a laurel wood
Carved out against the fiery firmament!

Under the intoxicating waves, in a purple dungeon,
In the pearl-oyster lachrymatory of the bitter expanses,
Like pearls of the abyss, you are born in the tomb.

Who took soothsaying Daphnes into ethereal captivity
And clad them in laurel, and reflected them in the well
Of immortal transparency? — Apollo.

Translated by Pamela Davidson