Some good-for-nothing — who knows why–
made up the tale that love exists on earth.
People believe it, maybe from laziness
or boredom, and live accordingly:
they wait eagerly for meetings, fear parting,
and when they sing, they sing about love.
But the secret reveals itself to some,
and on them silence settles down…
I found this out by accident
and now it seems I’m sick all the time.
I woke up and remembered,dear, it was your birthday.But far beyond my windowssnow has covered the ground,And made me forget, so now to atone,I sleep without dreams.
Faintly if at all the early snowflakesHover, hover.Water becoming ice is slowing inThe narrow channels.Nothing at all will happen here again,Will ever happen.Against the sky the willow spreads a fanThe silk’s torn off.Maybe it’s better I did not becomeYour wife.Memory of sun seeps from the heart.What is it? — Dark?Perhaps! Winter will have occupied usIn…
There at evening a neighbor talks with a girlAcross the fence, and only the bees can hearThis most tender murmuring of all.But we live ceremoniously and with difficultyAnd we observe the rites of our bitter meetings,When suddenly the reckless windBreaks off a sentence just begun –But not for anything would we exchange this splendidGranite city…
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,…
You don’t know, don’t care,That tired I haven’t the strengthTo decide to go to bed.Seeing the fields fade inThe sunset murk of pine-needles,And to know all is lost,That life is a cursed hell:I’ve got drunkOn your voice in the doorway.I was sure you’d come back.
The world has no more miracles. Don’t breakMy heart, song, but be still: you are the last.Not long ago you took your morning flightWith all a swallow’s free accomplishment.Now that you are a hungry beggar-woman,Don’t go knocking at the stranger’s gate.
