It's thirteen now! Quite recently
We welcomed greeting it with love.
At thirteen, wilfully and boldly
It showed its nature well enough.
Again, your day of birth is coming...
You vicious naughty boy! For once
Do not expect either good wishes
Or great festivities from us.
And if the dear land of ours
Used to be burnt and poured with blood,
Do you, Young one, really have to
Act like your father and granddad?
They're different. For you know better.
You are fated to a different thing.
And yet somehow our new wine "sherry"
You pour into the old wineskin.
Do you repent and cry? No words!
"I'm waiting — says the world, — I mean,
You'd better leave the bloody roads
At least when you are fifteen!"
Тринадцать лет! Мы так недавно
Его приветили, любя.
В тринадцать лет он своенравно
И дерзко показал себя.
Вновь наступает день рожденья...
Мальчишка злой! На этот раз
Ни празднества, ни поздравленья
Не требуй и не жди от нас.
И если раньше землю смели
Огнем сражений зажигать —
Тебе ли, Юному, тебе ли
Отцам и дедам подражать?
Они — не ты. Ты больше знаешь.
Тебе иное суждено.
Но в старые меха вливаешь
Ты наше новое вино!
Ты плачешь, каешься? Ну, что же!
Мир говорит тебе: «Я жду».
Сойди с кровавых бездорожий
Хоть на пятнадцатом году!
«What does my heart indeed just need / to be happy? So not a lot... / I like animals, trees, God, / A beam — at noon,darkness — at night. And on the edge of outside / I'll say: where was affliction? / I sang, and if I ever cried — / so only with tears of admiration.»
«If all silver that falls to us / At night from the moon, / And all gold that goes to us / From the sun at noon, I'd just bring to her...She'd tell me, / "Oh, my dear poet, / Give me such a precious metal / That is underground!"»
«When the moonlight dispassionately illuminates / The world that is asleep at night,quite all this world, / Sometimes it seems this light just penetrates / In the departed world like under a burial vault. By the moonlight it seems this world is afterlife, / And that before this life we lived...»
«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 co...»