One goes in straightforward ways,

Trees, walls, snow, beneath a glass.Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice,the painted sleighs and I, together, pass.And over St Peter’s there are poplars, crowsthere’s a pale green dome there that glows,dim in the sun-shrouded dust.The field of heroes lingers in my thought,Kulikovo’s barbarian battleground.The frozen poplars, like glasses for a toast,clash now, more noisily,…

We won’t be kissing, in the morning eitherNor, late at night, enjoy an evening shine…You breathe the sun, I breathe the moon; howeverWe are united by one love forever.I always have with me my true soul mate,You have with you your ever-merry girlfriend;Yet I’m acquainted with your eye’s dismayAs you’re the reason of my lifelong…

And that I’d plead and weepAnd throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,Or that I’d ask the sorcerersFor some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift:My precious perfumed handkerchief.Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soulVicarious tears or a single glance.And I swear to you by the garden…

For me, all verse should be off kilterNot the usual way.If only you knew what trash gives riseTo verse, without a tinge of shame,Like bright dandelions by a fence,Like burdock and like cocklebur.An angry shout, the bracing smell of tar,Mysterious mildew on the wall…And out comes a poem, light-hearted, tender,To your delight and mine.

While her man’s words are clearly recalled,She will not stop her lamentations loud.It will be so, until the snow puffWill give a mercy to the pined and tired.Forgetfulness of suffering and love —Though paid by life — what more could be desired?

The white path with clouds has been laden,Easy shadows o’er the waters raced.And all day the chime of bells aroseO’er the ocean of the ploughed soil;Here the toll is best-heard from Saint John’sBelfries which are seen afar, the tall.I am cutting off the lilac fashionedFor the brunches that have lost their bloom;Two black monks passed…

He changed himself into eternal ear…Into the rain, of that sang more than once.And all the flowers, that grow under heavens,Began to flourish – to meet the going death…But suddenly it got the silent one and saddened –The planet, bearing the humble name, the Earth.

You lived aloof, maintaining to the endyour magnificent disdain.You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,and suffocated inside stifling walls.Alone you let the terrible stranger in,and stayed with her alone.Now you’re gone, and nobody says a wordabout your troubled and exalted life.Only my voice, like a flute, will mournat your dumb funeral feast.Oh, who would…

It’s northerly here, and fall of this year,I chose to be my girl-friend.I’ve carried here the memory sureOf my last rejecting a date –The flame, so cold, so easy and pure,Of my overcoming the fate.

Momentous sounds issuedFrom the little belfry close by.Tossed! Such a made-up word-What am I, a flower or a letter?But my eyes already gaze grimlyInto the darkened looking glass.

For me, all verse should be off kilterNot the usual way.If only you knew what trash gives riseTo verse, without a tinge of shame,Like bright dandelions by a fence,Like burdock and like cocklebur.An angry shout, the bracing smell of tar,Mysterious mildew on the wall…And out comes a poem, light-hearted, tender,To your delight and mine.

Not as a frozen willow over your memory,But to cry to the world the names of those who sleep.What names are those!I slam shut the calendar,Down on your knees, all!Blood of my heart,The people of Leningrad march out in even rows,The living, the dead : fame can’t tell them apart.