A capricious, avaricious kind —
Like fire, the Russian mind is dire:
Irrepressible, lucidity for hire,
So gay — and gloom will always find.
Like an undeviating needle,
It sees the pole in ripples and murky still;
From abstract daydreams in life’s cradle
It shows the course for timorous will.
The way an eagle sees through fog
It examines all the valley’s dust,
It reflects sensibly about the earth
While bathing in dark mystical must.
Своеначальный, жадный ум, —
Как пламень, русский ум опасен
Так он неудержим, так ясен,
Так весел он — и так угрюм.
Подобный стрелке неуклонной,
Он видит полюс в зыбь и муть,
Он в жизнь от грезы отвлеченной
Пугливой воле кажет путь.
Как чрез туманы взор орлиный
Обслеживает прах долины,
Он здраво мыслит о земле,
В мистической купаясь мгле.
«Night in my own vast town — night / I slip the sleeping house — take flight / Others take me for daughter, bride / Yet I know only — night. / The July wind brushes my path before / A song from someone’s window — hardly at all / And now the wind will blow — till dawn / T...»
«You imagined me. Such isn’t in the world, / Such in the world can’t be. / Neither the doctor cannot heal, nor the poet, — / The shadow of the ghost the day and night is worrying you. / We met in that incredible year, / When the forces of the world had also dried out. / Everything w...»
«There is a beauty in your wine's dark stream, / In wholesome bread that's rising in the oven, / A woman that you see in anguished dreams / And joyously possess once waiting's over. But how to stake a claim on sunsets' tint, / When silence's joined by an unearthly mercy, / The sky is slowl...»
«O beautiful the wine in love with us! / The good bread in the oven — for us baking! / And that woman, who gave torment and fuss. / Whom now we can enjoy — for just the taking! But what to do with this rose sunset over / A sky becoming cold as hues disperse. / Where silence and unearth...»