Translations

I love your eyes, my dearest friend, With playful sparks, burning and brightening, That a gently raised glimpse may tend, And, like a cloud-strewn ring of lightning, Your graceful glance would let descend… Still there’s a charm of greater powers: You gaze on the ash of a zeal That once shone through passion-kissed hours;

…I’d like, maybe, to live with you In a small city, Where the twilight is eternal And bells let out eternal chimes. And in a small, cosy lodge in the countryside — Delicate ringing Of ancient hours — like little droplets of time. And sometimes, in the evening, out of an attic somewhere —

For you there’s a sea, brimming With longing — calm, pristine Cradled in your arm a city sleeps Where my dreams are slow and serene A feeble lamp, under a half-moon window I see your name — laces of gold and silver For five decades binding me in their coils

Through a mirror shrouded in dust, In the haze of slumber, I strain to find ways — as I must — Toward you, to shelter. I see a steamboat with its mast, And you are there, aboard… You, in the train’s fumes… Fields are vast, Where twilight’s grief is poured…

O, Muse of tears, most beauteous of the muses! O you, furious issue of the glowing night! You unleash a pitch-black snowstorm all over Rus’, And your wail pierces us like a hail of arrows. We are stricken; and Lo! the name that was repressed One hundred thousand times — pledging to you: Anna

I dwell in a land up the Great River That winds its way to your murmuring shore. I long for you each day in the desert of your absence As the River quenches our thirst and sore. This inner passion would only wither If the River should halt its winding flow.

All eyes under the sun — burning, A day like no other. ‘Tis to you, I am confiding, In case I should wander — Whoever’s lips I’d be kissing As time strikes for lovers, Whomever I’d pledge to, trembling With the midnight’s darkness, — Live, as passed from mother to child,