I can’t submit myself to man.
Who’d choose to be a slave?
We judge each other all life long —
and then? A lonely grave.
I can’t submit myself to God,
because I love Him so.
For God has set me on this road —
where else am I to go?
I tear the nets that bind mankind —
happiness, sadness, dreams.
We aren’t slaves — we are Divine —
His children, free as He.
I only plead, in the name of the Son,
with God, the Creator of Being,
«Father, for ever may they remain
as one — Your will and mine!»
Я не могу покоряться людям.
Можно ли рабства хотеть?
Целую жизнь мы друг друга судим, —
Чтобы затем — умереть.
Я не могу покоряться Богу,
Если я Бога люблю.
Он указал мне мою дорогу,
Как от нее отступлю?
Я разрываю людские сети —
Счастье, унынье и сон.
Мы не рабы, — но мы Божьи дети,
Дети свободны, как Он.
Только взываю, именем Сына,
К Богу, Творцу Бытия:
Отче, вовек да будут едино
Воля Твоя и моя!
«Not to set fire to myself / or be burned like Avvakum, / I do what I can / to chase away thought. I now orbit the earth / in low-level flight, / life’s burdens and vanities / far out of sight.»
«I thought they would make us the heroes / of cantantas, posters, books of all kinds; / that hats would be flung in the air / and streets go out of their minds. We had returned. / We were unbowed. / We had stayed true. But the city had thoughts of its own; / it just muttered a word or t...»
«Alive not by bread alone, / I dip a crust of sky, / in the morning chill, / in the stream flowing by.»
«Snow keeps falling night and day — / some god, now turned more strict, / is sweeping out from his domain / scraps of his old manuscripts. Sheaves of ballads, songs and odes, / all that now seems bland or weak — / he sweeps it down from his high clouds, / caught up now by newer work.»