X x x
Has my fate really been so altered,
Or is this game truly truly over?
Where are winters, when I fell asleep
In the morning in the sixth hour?
In a new way, severely and calmly,
I now live on the wild shore.
I can no longer pronounce
The tender or idle word.
I can’t believe that Christmas-tide is coming.
Touchingly green is this the steppe before
The beaming sun. Like a warm
Wave, licks the tender shore.
When from happiness languid and tired
I was, then of such quiet
With trembling inexpressible I dreamed
And this in my imagining I deemed
The after-mortal wandering of the soul.
X x x
Like a white stone at the bottom of the well,
One memory lies in me.
I cannot and I do not want to struggle,
It is both joy and suffering.
I think that anyone who looks into my
Eyes will all at once see him.
More sad and pensive he’ll become
That heard the story of this suffering.
I know that the gods had turned
People to objects, without killing mind,
That divine sadness lived eternally.
You’re turned into my memory, I find.
X x x
The first ray – as the blessing of the Lord –
Across the face of the beloved did creep,
Who, sleeping, went a little pale,
And then again more tightly went to sleep.
It seemed that warmth of ray of sun
Appeared to him just like a kiss…
And long with these my lips I have not touched
The tan strong shoulder or the dear lips.
And now, the deceased spirits in my long
Disconsolate wandering along the way,
I am now flying toward him as a song
And I caress him with a morning ray.
X x x
Not thus, from cursed lightness having disembarked,
I look with worry on the chambers dark?
Already used to ringing high and raw,
Already judged
not by the earthly law,
I, like a criminal, am being drawn along
To place of shame and execution long.
I see the glorious city, and the voice most dear,
As though there is no secret grave to fear,
Where day and night, in heat and in cold bent,
I must await the Final Judgment.
X x x
I was born not late and not early,
This time is blessed and meet,
Only God did not allow a heart
To live long without deceit.
And from this it is dark in the light room,
And from this do the friends I’ve sought,
Like the sorrowful birds of evening,
Sing of love that was not.
X x x
Best for me loudly the gaming-poems to say,
And for you the hoarse harmonica to play!
And having left, hugging, for the night of late,
Lose a band from a stiff, tight plait.
Best for me your child to rock and sway,
And for you to make fifty rubles in a day,
And to go on memory day to cemetery
There to look upon the white God’s lilac tree.
X x x
I will lead a man to dear one –
I don’t want the little joy –
And I’ll quietly lay to sleep
The glad, tired little boy.
In a chilly room once more
I will pray to Mother of God,
It is hard to be a hermit,
To be happy is also hard.
Only fiery sleep will come to me,
I’ll enter a temple on the hill,
Five-domed, white, and stone-hewn,
On the paths remembered well.
X x x
The spring was still mysteriously swooning,
Across the hills wandered transparent wind
And the deep lake was growing blue among us –
A temple forged and kept not by mankind.
You were affrighted of our first encounter,
And prayed already for the second one,
And now today once more is the hot evening –
How low over the mountain dropped the sun..
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