All days are fractured as though by crime,
The passage of hoary time grows rusty,
My body's fettered with rigidity,
My heart oppressed and my blood cold as ice.
But there comes lightning: everything can change
In a prophetic dream or wide awake.
The sword of the Archangel touches me
With burning flame and I'm alive again!
Все дни изломаны, как преступлением,
Седого Времени заржавел ход.
И тело сковано оцепенением,
И сердце сдавлено, и кровь — как лед.
Но знаю молнии: всё изменяется...
Во сне пророческом иль наяву?
Копье Архангела меня касается
Ожогом пламенным — и я живу.
Пусть на мгновение, — на полмгновения,
Одним касанием растоплен лед...
Я верю в счастие освобождения,
В Любовь, прощение, в огонь — в полет!
«When they say to me: “Alexandria” — / I see the white walls of a house, / A smallish garden with beds of stocks, / The pale sun of an autumn sunset, / And I hear the sounds of distant flutes. When they say to me: “Alexandria” — / I see the stars above a retiring city, / Drun...»
«What rain! / Our sail is drenched / and one cannot see that it was striped, / The rouge runs down your cheeks, / and you look like a dye worker from Tyre. / Nervously we crossed the threshold / of the charcoal burner’s low mud hut; / The man with the scar on his forehead / pushed a...»
«If they say: “you must suffer both torture and burning” — / I shall joyously sing on the stake that will finish my life — / Obedient. If I had to abandon my singing forever, / I would silently offer my tongue and my hands to the knife — / ...»
«Some rose from the underground, / Some from exile, factories, mines, / Poisoned by suspicious freedom / And the hitter smoke of cities. / Others from military ranks, / From noblemen’s ravished nests, / Where to the country churchyard / They carried dead fathers and brothers. / In s...»