Severyanin

 

Igor Severyanin

 

Breathe in the Sunlight

My Dacha

Nocturne

Queen Victoria

Notched Lilac

Little Elegy

Rose in Snow

What is a dream?

To Eyes Of Your Soul

Daisies

All As In Past

Wind

Tea Rose

And She Died Young…

Haymaking

When at Nights…

Habanera

Chansonnette

Envy Not Your Friend

Habanera II

Five Years Later

Amazon

You Did Not Go…

Marionette of Pranks

To You, My Beauty

Minionette

You’re Still A Girl

A Girl Wept In The Park

Miss On Walk

Triolet

Eight Lines Each

Overture

It Took Place At The Sea

Zizi

In Limousine

Grandiose

The Sun And The Sea

Almost a Gazelle

Revelry

July Noon

Russian

You Will Not Return To Me

Gourmet

Amber Elegy

At the Premiere

Electrosonnanse

Sonatas In Storm

Spring Madrigal

Spring Day

On Trout River

Rocking Chair Of Dreamer

Excesses

Brindisi

Poem Without A Name

Prologue

Flower of Ladies’ Bouquet

In Autumn-Cut July

Elementary Sonata

Kenzel

Airy Yacht

MIRRATA

Lyre Fable

In The Restaurant

On The Islands

Elegy

It Is All For The Child

Fantasy of Sunrise

Courtesan’s Carriage

From The Letter

In Birch Cottage

Oblivion in Sin

Nelly

Kin-Cato

Cousin Lydia

Autumn Berceuse

Ego-Polonaise

In Spreading Maples

Suicide

Be Calm

Coquette

Ladies’ Club

Evening Sketch

Grateful Poem

Seamstress

Rondo

Cautionary Poem

Sea Memo

Ice Cream From Lilac

Champagne Polonez

“I’m genius Igor Severyanin”

Dissonance

Rehabilitation

In Luminous Darkness

Poem About Fofanov

May Song

Dacha Coffee

Seine Of Dreams

Both Of You Are My Wives…

In Jasmine Bushes

Southern Gaud

Chansonette Of The Maid

In Restaurant Over Kura

Baltic Sea

Poem Of Spring Trills

In Hotel

Awful Poem

Rondo

In Carriage Of Esclarmonde

Worthless

Valentina

Poem Of Days Of May

I Won’t Come Today

Barberry Poetry

Poem About Thousand First Acquaintance

Overture

When The Ship Will Come

Verbena

Torment Of The Storm

Poem Of Opened Eyes

Poem Of Rejection

Poem Of Hopelessness

Poem Of Blue Evening

Don’t Fly Away!

Three-Star Triolet

Poetry About Gogland

It Is Scary

Poem Of Annoyance

What The Happiness

Poem From Afar

Poem Of What Was, May Be, Did Not Happen

Poem Of Last Hope

By The Stage

Yamburg

Candy Daughter

Taffey

Rescreen Of A King

On The Skis

Yury’s

Berceuse Of Lilac

Alexander IV

Parting Prayer For Petrograd

Introduction

Est-Toyla

Then And Now

By the Sea

Leitmotifs

Madis

Bluer

March

The Final Glory

Drawing With The Needle

In The Village

At The Sologub

Postman

Love Is Causelessness

Rondo XX

Moon Glares

Painted Ones

Poem of the Reason for Cheer

Poem to Luminous Brother

Poem of Despair

Poem Of Heartache

Poem of Old Rhythms

Poem Of Prosaic Soil

Sonnet XXXI

Poem of Feeling of Spring

On The Contrary

Purple Bloom

The Autumn Palette

Ephemerides

Rondel XVI

Nona

Drawing

Poem For Gourmet

Fast And Feast

Caviar And Vodka

Poem Of Honourable Lady

Poem to Refugees

Thu And Ani

Brilliant Poem

Cultivated Lilac Blooming

To Felissa Kruut

Poem to Death

Poem Of Loyal Fishing

To One Different from Others

Easter In Petersburg

Praise to the Fields

Fairy Eiole

Poem “Villa Mon Repos”

I Dream…

Mary

Design On Canvas

Will I Forget You?

Bas-Relief

Smoke Of Ice

Her Pets

Mariinsky Theatre

Before The War

Brunette In Pink

Silver Sonata

Poems To Moscow

Words Of The Sun

Sunday

Who Are You?

It Will Be Soon

Classical Roses

On Earth In Beauty

Ray Of Sun

Dried Up Vial

Reconciling Water

In The Snow

In Hamlet By The Sea

Piama

No More Than Dream

Ten Years

Dream About Village

My Fishing Rod

Narva

Appearance Of A Poet

Let Whole Evening Play…

By Sea And Lakes

They All Speak About The Same Thing

It’s A Shame To Believe…

Magnificent Woman

Green Charm

Holidays

To Contemporary Girl

Orchid

Pines Of Her Childhood

The Girl For Years…

The Crown Love

In That May

Thrust To The South…

Your Road

Twofold Silence

To Dear Girlfriends

Terror Of Deserts

My Acquaintance

It Could Have Been Thus…

Pigeons

Without Us

The Distance Shines…

Sperata

Igor Severyanin

Pallas

Tyutchev

Bunin

Verlaine

Bryusov

Kuzmin

Mayakovsky

Gippius

Saltykov-Schedrin

George Ivanov

Dumas

 

Breathe in the Sunlight

Breathe in the sunlight, live with the sunlight -

And with the sun you will glisten too!

The earth will be warm in the living sunlight

Of hearts that knew of the light and good.

 

Breathe in the heaven, live with the heaven -

And with the heaven will shine your eye.

With love to earth will descend the heaven

And world, forgiven, will meet the sky.


 

My Dacha

My little hut of green –

Under the river, in old park.

What solitude is here!

What wilderness! What calm!

 

A bit to the side – a dam

By dusky mill; after it is

The poor sleepy village

Without faith in cheer of better days.

 

Like gates into the park – like a ghost,

Stands the abandoned palace;

It has decayed, reminding

Of a case without jewels.

 

My park is grim; in it is much shadow;

Are strong hundred-year-old oaks;

It has grown; mushrooms are growing

On the sides; in grass there are roads.

 

My park is lovely; urns are white;

From terraces visible are

River, huts, the tsar’s house…

Thus it is good in evening hour.


 

Nocturne

 

Cherishing sleep, purple is the west of day.

Like a heart is a tower for the brain.

 

Only I’ll remember you – to you draw.

All my thoughts one by one you know.

 

And if I want or don’t want – without words to you

I am coming… And west is purple and full of sorrow.


 

Queen Victoria

 

Our meeting – Queen Victoria:

Rarely-rarely in bloom…

After her life – an elegy,

And hope in a dream.

 

Trembling in the flight,

I languish from bliss - you will come,

Our meeting – Queen Victoria:

Rarely, rarely in bloom…


 

Notched Lilac

 

The farm awakes.

The spring talk

Threw into window… Awake,

Did sing

The young lyre’s strings,

  Lilac blossomed in spring.

Smelled of hay.

With winter prison

  Ground said goodbye. But – what dreams?

The rake bent.

The swords shined

  And notched the lilac of spring!


 

Little Elegy

 

She stood up on her tiptoes

And gave to me her lips.

I tiredly her did kiss

In the damp autumn silence.

 

And tears dropped without sound

In the damp silence of autumn.

Dimmed boring day – and dull it was,

Like all, that we don’t dream of.


 

Rose in Snow

 

Like bonfire in a cave, fireplace flames out…

And, like a rose in snow, a call approving –

You will come in, silver… I – forgive, I cannot…

I will kiss you… like an idea of Brahmin!

Oh! Child from frost – is the rose in the snow.

Voluptuously will drink the velvet of gaudy sofa.

Who will drink? It will drink the pearl of these forms…

Be mine, draw! In glasses I pour verse,

I pour joy through the edge – and sings the glass…

And sings glass – sings the cabinet,

And tiger’s sofa, and bonfire of hearth…

Drunkenness won’t be heavy – endlessly:

Where wine without wine – fate to live and dream.


 

What is a dream?

 

What is a dream? What is a dream?

It’s thought of a rose, but not a rose still.

 

What is a dream? What is a dream?

It is mimosa tender-velvety.

 

What is a dream? What are the dreams?

These are seraphs’ shining tears!


 

To Eyes Of Your Soul

 

To eyes of your soul – sadness and prayers,

My illness, my fear, weeping of my conscience,

And all, that is in the end, and, that is in the beginning here,

  With the eyes of your soul…

 

To eyes of your soul – lilac rapture

And liturgy – anthem of jasmin nights;

All-all, that will be inspiration, that is dear,

  To your soul’s eyes!

 

Eyes of your soul – clergy of visions that scare…

Kill me! torture! Torment! Strangle!

But you must accept!... And cloak, and lyre’s laughter –

  With the eyes of your soul!


 

Daisies

 

Oh look! How many daisies –

  And here, and there they are…

They are in flower; there are many; they are in excess;

  They flower.

 

Their triangular petals – like wings,

  Like silk of white…

You – summer’s might! You – joy of plenty!

  You – the regiment of light!

 

Ready, earth, the drink from roses,

  To the stem juice give!

O, girls! O, stars of daisies!

  I am in love with ye!


 

All As In Past

 

All as in past – she said tenderly:

  All as in the past.

But hopelessly in eyes I was staring –

  All as in the past.

 

Kissed softly, smiling –

  All as in the past.

But still we were lacking something –

  All as in the past!


 

Wind

 

Wind is happy, wind is fast,

Along the daisies it does chase,

Bell swings on the harness,

As it sways the river’s jets.

Wind, the flighty prankster,

Celebrates holiday everywhere,

Turns all that it can, circles,

And unnecessarily giggles.

Wind is dear and kind-hearted

And to judgments indifferent,

But will anger – do not blame:

And will scold all the same!


 

Tea Rose

 

Over the quietly dosing pond –

  Where is unusual silence,

There is a little cozy home,

  And before home – the tea rose.

 

Over her are fans of dragonflies –

  Like emerald fans;

Around, anaesthesia exude flowers

  And cherish the unawakening dreams.

 

Façade admires itself in the pond,

  In its whimsical polish;

And with it is flirting the garden,

  Admiring the shameful rose.

 

And day and night, nights, days –

  Unusual sorrow’s tides.

And whispers rose: “Alone - us

  With you, miserable, my garden …”

 

And between the, with fire of dawn

  And to the sunset’s oblivion,

In garden of pigmy, like the kings,

  Lives in the incredible dream.

 

They laugh and they make sound,

  The impressions catching greedily;

Under their feet is crushed the garden,

  Immortality – victim of smouldering!

 

Why would he stand with rose, if will come

  Accidentally about her the news?..

And having not had time to bloom,

  Hurries to fade the tea rose…


 

And She Died Young…

 

And she died young,

Like she always wanted to die!..

There, where willow over water sorrows,

Thus now and onward she reposes.

As such, she could not with the breath

Warm the sunset dense,

To die young she desired,

And at young age she died.

 

On side of passer-by roads

Cemetery, and in it – an island,

And in coffin, like in oak armor

Sleeps the princess with no worries, no tears.

Sleeps and sees through the ground – all through –

Someone light with a dream bends

Over grave and whispers: “It came true, -

And at young age she died”.

 

He, who prays with dream – who?

He would sing in deceased duet?

How many songs were lived by the soul?

He’s a poet! He’s a poet! He’s a poet!

May it only to poet be dear,

May it only to poet shine as a star!

The myrrh saw the foe in antiquity, -

And at young age she died.


 

Haymaking

 

Pours the rain, golden-braided,

Pours, like from a watering pot.

I am going to haymaking

On the thick alleyway.

Here over river is the cliff,

I am sitting on a bench

To look on hundreds of scythes,

Like the steel snakes.


 

When at Nights…

 

When at nights all is quiet,

I want merriment, I want flames,

That would be dashing, that would be quiet,

That chandelier light chase host of shades!

 

Palace is empty, palace is silent,

Quietly whispers to me the row of legends…

Their sense is sickly, long is their plot…

Like snakes of black crawling bands…

 

And the heart weeps, and suffers the heart,

Here-here will tear, - for him you wait…

Guilt, merriment, for music thirsts,

But night has closed – where will you find them?

 

Shine, thoughts! Dreams, fall laughing!

Let go, Muse, in dance of ecstasy!

And what for us – ghost! And what – threatened!

Art is with us – and for us is divinity!..


 

Habanera

 

Gitana! Throw off the bravura sombrero,

Pour into vial joyful claret…

We will drink for sourness of caballero,

Letting fragrant smoke of cigarettes.

Dream sails, like a light galley,

Somewhere far… sails where – do not know!

Fire! Fire! Let flare up habanera, -

We’ll bridle passion and in madness go!..

 

Gallop of mandol will reach allegretto,

Mesmerized by the wish of pirouette,

  In languor will rustle the signs of palms…

 

Wine! Wine! Gitana, sprinkle them,

  Bouquets of dreams… there’ no need for coats then –

Then the Pompeian cult’s naked frame!..


 

Chansonnette

 

Of middle height, elegant

With bronze-oxide head,

She – the embodiment of the toast.

Mais non, regardez, regardez!

 

Of middle height, piquant

She – hero of Daudet.

Many followers – of them there are hundred.

Mais non, regardez, regardez!

 

But a woman whose height is middle

Can be tall et deux…

And it’s good to know that it’s simple …

Mais non, regardez, regardez!


 

Envy Not Your Friend

Envy not your friend if he's more handsome,

More intelligent or wealthier than you.

Let his merits and let his successes

Not tear up the laces on your shoe.

 

Move along your way without a care,

Smile still broader out of his success!

Maybe he'll face darkness and despair

And your porch will be adorned with bliss!

 

Laugh with him, and cry with his distresses:

Feel him with your heart, and for all time!

Do not block your friend from his successes:

It's a sin to do so! Truly, it's a crime!


 

Habanera II

 

Piece the corkscrew in the cork resilient, -

And the sights of women won’t be fearful!

Yes, the sights of women won’t be fearful,

And to torrid passion trails will curl…

 

Splash into the cup amber of muscat

And observe the color of the sunset…

Paint the thoughts and colors of the sunset

And for roar of love await, await!..

 

Catch the women, lose the thoughts…

Count of kisses – go, count!

And number the end to the kisses –

And will be happiness in easy sense!..


 

Five Years Later

To you, Eugenia, who gave me happiness,

I bring contrition, aflame and thorough...

You loved and suffered, and now accept all this:

Fathom my angst, fathom my sorrow.

 

All life is broken, all life to bits is torn,

In error of the youth - the curse forever...

The dream has dried all up, because I kept you not,

The life is crippled, the wing is severed...

 

Forgive the one who calls, forgive the one who grieves -

Perhaps a weakling, perhaps a genius...

For past there is no need: In it the future lives -

In future past exists .. Forgive, Eugenia!


 

Amazon

 

Yesterday at a park I met an Amazon

At the bravura spacious mazurka’s sound.

Figures of the doll in the shape of blue! –

Cheeky with delight, I said in pursuit.

 

She turned around, and she stared,

She slightly smiled, with sight undressed.

The whip with a sly pattern she had waved,

Thick arrows into my heart pierced.

 

And under her pranced the red horse,

Stubbornly trampled the mare in place.

And I don’t know, it seemed, it was –

She spoiled me, to please the mistress…


 

You Did Not Go…

 

Lilac laughed the day in whole

With laughter rose-purple…

  The dried up day sun pitied.

  You didn’t go (Maybe it is sigh about it?)

 

You didn’t go. The lilac laughed,

Stifling with the blazing laughter…

  At blind villages, far away,

  Ran the train with heavy thunder.

 

Lilac laughed angrily,

With sharp laughter it dreams was killing.

  Yes. And you didn’t go, - all day.

  And I waited. (Maybe it is sigh about it?)

 

To the moon the lilac laughed,

With laughter merciless-sensible…

  You didn’t go. In park is damp shade.

  Heart waits, with thunder heart goes mad.

Will the lilac laugh out loud?

Or, burned with the laugh, will fade?


 

Marionette of Pranks

 

Pure-blooded horses in dance scattered,

The crowd is smitten with curiosity and trembling.

In a carriage rides in a capital

The lacy capricious wife of the sovereign.

 

Laughing contemptuously at the sharp bows

And counting everybody as serfs,

Suddenly notices wife – there, where are temple’s columns,

Something colorful-sharp, stifling the laugh.

 

Ragamuffin, prettier than palace of lovers,

Stirred her sensuality, obsequiously having chilled.

And awoke woman in her, and awakened female in her,

And like motif in an orchestra shuddered she.

 

The capricious one willed to sit the ragamuffin

On velvet pillow right by herself.

And did not hold the blush the insulted crowd,

Although remained outside as a hopeless slave.

 

And when the frightened – charmed beggar

Unconsciously fulfilled the grivoise order,

The tired woman, throwing off bootlegs,

Stomped with the carriage the marionette of pranks.


 

To You, My Beauty

 

The light-green veil with lilac patches

Over the pink ears was lightly raised.

Veil was barely damp, and warm it was,

And you smiled before me, kind and pretty…

Tenderly looked in the eyes, dreamily looked in the eyes,

Disturbed the sleeping and in pink smiled.

And I didn’t hear the streets with ringing and noises,

And heart responded with gammas thrilled.

The night went, rustling flirtatiously with plumes, with cloths,

With velvet fairy tale we wounded each other’s hearts.

The satin shrugs… births and deaths…

Low tides… shudders… the circles and the gains…

Is there time for the street with ringing and with noises?

Is there time for the city with the torturing thoughts?

Iconically I built in my heart and in my heart I built pagodas…

Ah, lips are scarlet and juicy, like berries!

We parted… for what, answer… and in the room dreamed long…

O, eyes and teardrops, do you recall my eyes?

Do you recall? Do you believe? Do you wait? You, magical!

They cannot be repeated – the wonderful moments…

I demand insistently, I make an order fiery:

Be gone, all that is foreign! Be gone, stone city!

Be gone all, oppressors! Be gone, the universe in all!

All brief! All fragile! All petty! All perishable!

And we, my beauty, in oblivion will drown,

Bewitching with impulsiveness the moment without passion!


 

Minionette

 

Bells of valley lilies, sing-sing,

  Sing-sing to me, -

Of quietly vanished love in spring,

  About the love’s spring:

 

About the girl’s azure smile

  And – oh, pain – about moon…

Sing, sing, my princes,

  To me, sing-sing!


 

You’re Still A Girl

 

You’re still a girl: this whole patch up scarlet

On the lilybatiste blouse – spring…

You’re still a girl, reading the West,

Into lilac canopy the secret carrying.

 

So dear! Like the penny of gold,

In different voices of the youth you sing…

Charming is the smiling pea-coal,

The naïve ear into hair entangling.

 

And, what all, know: take the twig into palms.

And – who here now? – we run on to parade-croquet!

You’re still a girl, you’re still a buttercup,

And I will give you a buttercups’ bouquet.


 

A Girl Wept In The Park

 

A girl wept in the park: “Look, father,

The pretty swallow broke her paw. –

I’ll take the poor bird and in kerchief wrap her…”

And, by a minute shocked, the father thought,

And forgave her future whims and mischief

To the dear daughter, sobbing from pity.


 

Miss On Walk

 

Dog accompanies miss in the morning,

Miss likes the walks before lunch

And says to dog: “Well so, be barking

At sparrows, but calm down in time.”

 

Funnily dog wags the sharp tail,

Looking at mistress with a smile;

They walk on the gracious bridge,

Where they must be met with a page.

 

Let us accept the page as the lord

And about page stop at this…

When is fathomed the thought of last chord,

With the author he already sympathizes.


 

Triolet

 

You are desired by me, as storm – by sea,

I’m dear to you, as to storm – still.

  Sea loves us. And, with purple

Sky, “like storm – by the sea,

  She is desired.” – for hundreds miles

  Rumble waves, ridges of purple

With evening dawn: “like storm to sea…

  Like to the storm – the still…”


 

Eight Lines Each

I

On the deck of the ship and behind mirror cabin

You stand eating the seed of a plum like a squirrel.

You are tender and delicate, so soft and fragile,

A bit like a swallow and a bit like a girl.

At the tiller, two sailors are smiling happily,

And the captain romances, to you poems declaiming

Of a cruiser mysterious, of the dove under cupolas,

First invoking Daryalskaya, then invoking Morella.

II

In you, so much tenderness quiet,

But dragging the time insanely,

You hid it under the riot

Of day crazy and full of sin.

In shoulder’s and belly’s movements

And leaning over the buckwheat

In you, so much quiet tenderness -

If only she had been for me!

III

I will come to you in glory,

Jewess, of the beaming stars.

Be not woeful, do not worry:

Simply fling the gate ajar!

Pay back love with love, and so,

On the traitor take revenge:

On the hills - humps in a row -

My corpse in a lake submerge.


 

Overture

 

Princess’s necklace – chords of a lyre,

Pouring bands and garlands of constellations,

And we, aesthetes, we – jewelers,

We jewelers of this necklace.

 

Princess’s necklace – palace of heavens,

Mockery, love, sins, woe,

Grimace of pain in the clown’s face…

Princess’s necklace – my poems.

 

Princess’s necklace, princess’s necklace…

But who is princess, but what is she –

To whom all anthems, to whom all masses?

My princess – my dream!


 

It Took Place At The Sea

It took place at the sea, in the foam of the ocean,

Where the carriage of city rarely arrives.

In the tower of a palace the queen was playing Chopin,

And to sound of Chopin the page fell in love.

 

It was all very simple, it was all very dear:

The page asked her to cut pomegranate in half,

And she gave him a half, and the page she did tire,

And to sound of sonatas the queen fell in love.

 

And she later submitted, submitted with thunder,

Like a slavegirl the queen slept the night till the day.

It took place at the sea, where the turquoise waves wander,

Where the page's sonatas and azure foam play.


 

Zizi

 

Noiselessly went the motor landau

On the “islands” to “pointe” of green,

And sight of Zizi, singing rondo,

Slipping in lorgnette, a dandy’s languished knees…

 

The highway arrogantly crunches from tires,

And in the spring the air suffocates,

And in soul are fragments of lines of Musset,

And the offensive soullessness on the face.

 

Zizi, Zizi! Don’t you pity yourself?

Don’t pity yourself, budded and mild?

Or, maybe, table of whole soul

And lily cannot be a cocotte?

 

Stop the engine! Take off the coat!

And silk of linen, dishonor’s cobweb,

Break the necklace, and, leaving landau,

Wash with nakedness the moire algae!

 

What till that, what will say Emptiness

Under the hats, cylinders and kepi!

What to it! – Such nakedness

More beautiful than all beauties!


 

In Limousine

 

She went into the motor limousine,

Passion of sketch in proper cavalier,

And in the frailty of rubbers dancing

She had restored the voice of Cavalieri.

 

Who knew her on the stairs: “Manon?”

And legs for her in the chilly lobby,

Though she had thrown: “mais non” –

That hands with fur shod masterfully?

 

And he was empty, like a chanticleer –

Ribbed, framed burr.

To many a desired cavalier –

Used by many, a good-looker.

 

O woman! Call him in the tour,

Please take him in the boudoir…

Bud do not take Masset with yourself:

Letter to Masset… It’s not for a guitar!..


 

Grandiose

 

All pleasure and all excesses,

All stars of the world and all planets

Proudly to pearl in their sonnets, -

My sonnets – princess’s necklace!

 

I put on, under explosion of orchestra,

Necklace of sonnets (measure the amplitude!)

Yes, I dress with the hand the maestro

On Maiden’s neck. She – Immortality!

 

She without world, she without ground,

Without beginning and without end …

Nothing is her sacred conception…

Who will doubt – so be gone!

 

She is placeless and ubiquitous,

She is innocent and a sweet sinner,

Yes, sweet sinner, as if abyss,

And like abyss – she is without shore.

 

Under the drums, under castanets,

All the shudders and all excess

Proudly pearl in necklace of princess,

Not knowing soil of any planet…


 

The Sun And The Sea

Sun adores the sea, and sea adores the sun -

Ocean waves the clear luminary are caressing,

Loving, like a dream in amphora they drown -

And then in the morning: Sun shines, incandescent.

 

Sunshine will approve you, sun won't judge you ever,

And again will trust him sea that is his lover...

This has always been, and this will be forever,

Only sea will never measure the sun's power!


 

Almost a Gazelle

 

And roses, and dreams, and lightning – in glasses!

We’ll fill the glasses – we’ll dry the glasses!

 

Ring, like strings, like moon’s strings,

The glasses with an icy drink!

 

Splash, like gray sea breakers,

Splash with nectar, glasses!

 

Twist mysterious delight’s runes,

Glasses with incandescent ice!

 

And in blood will flare up fiery Peruns,

When the glasses vaporize!


 

Revelry

 

Let me, let me recall… I was in head of yours

Trimmed with forget-me-not hood of fur…

And still you said: “Ah, how agile you are:

Cabinet has been readied, and, so is camp, of course.”

 

You had ordered the “nail file” – thus you had called the sterlet –

And the sauce of Kapoor people, and the Rhine wine’s cone…

I want to make a masterpiece, I want to operate

All that is tied to you – even the sauce know …

 

And the needles of Chartreuse? And the bowls of Champagne?

And the glass beads on windows? And the flowers? And Romanians?

We wanted each other… Escape love we did not…

We in confluence of sweet jasmine tenor heard.

 

But… you are in sorrow? Ah, Lucy, forgive me –

I can correct it… You whispered, “arrangement”?

Well, dear one! For “patches thread there is”, -

Hurricane troika smokes at the entrance!


 

July Noon

 

Cinematograph

 

Elegant carriage, in electric pulse,

Elastically on highway sand rustled;

In it two virgin dames, in rapture fast-paced,

In scarlet-meeting rush – as bees to petal.

 

And around ran the pines, equality’s ideals,

Sailed the sky, sang the sun, the wind somersaulted,

Under tires of the engine dust smoked, jumped the gravel,

Coincided with wind bird on roads without roads…

 

Stupefied evilly monk at the monastery fence,

Hearing in frailty carriage’s sounds “moral loss”…

And, with fright brushing off the awakened sands,

With harmless sight the playful carriage he cursed.

 

Laughter, fresh, like the sea, laughter hot, like a crater,

Chilling in height of spheres, like lava poured from the carriage,

Lightning-fast trembled the channel’s wheels under,

And went drunk with wine of delight the driver encouraged.


 

Russian

 

Laces up, is purple forest in morning.

Spider has climbed up on the cobweb.

Happy dew shines…

What air! What beauty! What light!

It is good to walk in morning on the oats,

See the bird, the bee and the froglet,

To hear sleepy shout of the cock,

To exchange “ha-ha-ha” with echo far off.

Ah, I love to aimlessly shout in morning.

Ah, I love in birches to meet the maiden.

To meet and, leaning on the fence,

Before-morning shade chase from face.

Her undreamt-of dream to awake.

To tell her, as in dreams I’m raised.

As it flutters to embrace her chest,

Somehow for the life push her apart!


 

You Will Not Return To Me

You will not return to me even for Tamara,

For our little daughter, that sweet little thing:

You have summer houses and you eat lobster now,

You are under protection of a raven's wing.

 

You will not return to me: Velvet dresses you wear;

They the winglessness of tired shoulders disguise...

You will not return to me: on the cards the soothsayer

For a ruble put out the flash of final rays...

 

You will not return to me, even to say so long -

On the casket you'll wet the shawl in offense...

You will not return to me in a dress made of cotton -

Like a cheap flower, a quiet, joyful-pitiful dress.

 

Like a flower... recall roses of muslin paper?

Living have not a half word at a grave plate.

You will not return to me: dreams are mages no longer -

I will die all alone, do you understand that?

 


 

Gourmet

 

You draw the swallows on a menu,

Whipping the cream to grated chestnut.

I will not betray you for this

And never loving you will I cease.

All the fat that threatens I’ll become,

In your paddock. I do not blame,

That you don’t know the cock by Roston,

And you don’t know at all about swine.

But when your favourite Arab

Will give the partridge with pressed caviar,

Sterlet from Sheksna and pitcher of Chablis,

Piquantly pressing refined nostrils.

You’ll startle thus, as will smile the sisters,

Accepting for spring winnowing the shivers…


 

Amber Elegy

 

                  Village, in which Eugene was bored,

                  Was a beautiful corner.

A.  Pushkin 

 

The beautiful corner do you recall –

The autumn park in amber-scarlet light?

And marble of the urns, placed like a glass

On intersection of roads yellow-pale?

 

Do you recall the icy glass

Of the trout river’s green jets?

Do you recall comic honey agarics

Under the cedars, bending heads?

 

You will recall over river chalet,

How I had called the three-room dacha,

How I had cried from happiness,

I’ll cry once more of warmth and tenderness?

 

You recollect… Oh no! I can’t forget

Him, who does not recollect…

I want in dreams to fulfil you entire

And humbly to be my friend to ask I desire.


 

At the Premiere

 

Fanning the wish with dreams’ sail,

Shining with necklace of oral,

Countess hit with ostrich fan

Of chevalier taken aback.

 

Orchestra melody flaunted in pink

Over white velvet foyer.

Countess with dragonfly’s grace

Bit the chocolate-kaye.

 

Scurried absentmindedly shining people

From the neckline and tailcoats’ tail.

And with critique of worldly rubric tomorrow

We will mark the beautiful row.


 

Electrosonnanse

 

What is electrosonnanse?

It is lightning and lightning bug.

Dream and tale. Hexameter and stanza.

Thought and dream. Saw and fiddlestick.

Equal blood and evil misalliance.

Secret of night and woman’s pupil.

The creation – electrosonnanse!


 

Sonatas In Storm

 

On Your affected nerves sounded all night sonatas,

And you lay in the tower on lily of valley carpet…

Crackled, scorched the storm, and the amber ropes,

As if titan-strings, sounded the whole corvette.

 

But is it your business that somewhere they weep and moan,

That rumbles the mad storm, throwing at rocks the frigate,

You mutinously drank wine. You took the Mont Blanc note!

Shined agates of the brooches, brighter was eyes’ agate!

 

Crackled, scorched the storm. Moaned the palace pier.

People screamed and died. Ship a ship chased.

And you, seed of grenade, laughing kissed the actor…

He sat by piano – like genius – and like slave ended the game…


 

Spring Madrigal

 

In the white-rose pea, fragrant,

Play two crumbs cambric.

Upon the road knock the feet,

The bonne shows horns to the kids.

O, fraulein! You and pair of our crumbs –

The fragrant pea of rose of white.


 

Spring Day

This day of spring is hot and golden -

The city's blinded by the sun!

I'm me again! I am emboldened!

I'm in love, happy and I'm young!

 

The soul sings and bursts for the fields and

I come to strangers and say "hey."

What spaciousness I feel! What freedom!

What songs and flowers in my way!

 

Soon - vanish into the young meadows!

Soon - into snowdunes, full of bliss!

To look in pink faces of women,

Like friend, an enemy to kiss!

 

Make noise, the springtime forests mighty!

Bloom, lilac bushes! Grow tall, grass!

No sinners: Everyone is righteous

On a day so divinely blessed!


 

On Trout River

 

On trout river, in northern area,

Don’t shoot the ducks in blue evening in a boat:

Blissful are autumn evening reflections

In area northern, on river of trout.

 

On trout river, in quivering aspen

It is good over sharp oars to dream.

It is evening, it is chilly. Raspberries sleep blurrily.

Jumps by the grown reeds the boat slippery.

On the shore with mimosas blossomed the flaxes,

And trouts in the river rustled with graces.


 

Rocking Chair Of Dreamer

 

  How good it is for you to dream

  In the hammock made of reeds

Under mystic eye – in bestial pond!

  Like dreams – surprises

  Under rocking chair of dreamer

Wearily peel off – Verlain, then Prudhomme.

 

  What the marvel and wonder!

  You are – lady Godiva,

In a moment – Iolanta, in a moment - you are Sappho,

  It is worth for you to turn around –

  And boots up the heart.

All in world is possible, all for you nothing!

 

  To the left you swing –

  The queen’s queen,

Mistress of planet of blue antelopes,

  Where, from smell of gillyflower,

  Is such rapture,

That the ordinary serf will dream with porphyry!

 

  You will swing to the right,

  To you glory will smile –

And will die your name, like flowers of heavenly flower beds;

  Your name will thunder,

  And in smoke of tar

You will come to Earth – the Creation’s Columbus!

 

  And into height you will swing,

  Where there’s flickering beads,

You will fathom the secret of eternal life’s process.

  And dreams-surprises

  Over rocking chair of dreamer

Will come true in capricious but immortal excess!


 

Excesses

 

You have come in a chocolate hat,

Raised the veil of gold,

And, looking at squares of parquet,

Place on piano the boa.

 

You went quiet on pale yellow armchair,

With the heel hammering the parquet…

Why did you pull: “and if?”

And the face dipped in the bouquet.

 

By the window alporoses in the basket

Barely sighed – and the breath is ornate…

The cousins I did not see

And of it I am guilty barely…

 

You looked subtly-drunk

With pupil pinching my heart…

And, like Diane, the arrow plunged

Having sharpened the edge with the tongue…

 

And I sailed, inhaling cigar,

Weaving gray and swinging tulle.

To load into your Niagara,

Your haymaking’s ripe July.


 

Brindisi

 

More full fill the glass

And to bottom drink it,

Under the thunder’s clash

Pale and weary!

 

  Your soul, aeolian,

  Will update rose flower.

  Mignol, you are a gondola,

  And I – your gondolier.

 

May all around be gray

From the cawing flocks, -

In excessive one’s embraces

Let melt the snow!

 

  Oh, in a grape’s drop

  Is wisdom of all planets,

  Directing on the blimp

  Flirtatious lorgnette!

 

And, the eyes having made violet,

Devoutly a dream…

Dope’s everywhere, Mignol,

Everywhere – and there, and here!


 

Poem Without A Name

 

Prince took you as janitor. The kids

Are dressed in silk, convenient for “blind man’s buff.”

He did not leave for you from regiment,

But played and stopped, just like a cigarette butt.

 

With the luxury he had you charmed

And dimmed the weak mind with liqueur.

And you returned into a dear cellar

Lover not with reproach having judged.

 

The poet came. To heed you he began,

And took for himself the pitiful mansard.

But he had had a mother-hag,

Caustic for the previous cockade.

 

And to nativity scene you came second,

The poor poet “got off to grave in angst”.

With labor you could not obtain your bread,

But to live in the cellar you had no strength.

 

And, bowing, you went into the street,

Before “evil fate,” with open price-current

And dream was left to you – the prince

With soul of who had warmed you with a talent.


 

Prologue

Fragment

 

Alas! It’s empty on the margin

Of dreamy woods of Olympus…

For us Pushkin became Derzhavin

We are in need of new voices!

 

Now dirigibles everywhere

Fly, muttering with propellers,

And, like swords, assonances

Rashly have cut down the rhymes.

 

We live sharply and momentarily –

Our spoiled caprice:

To be icy, but inspired,

And what the word – it is surprise.

 

The cheap spears we do not bear

Of tones familiar,

And the magnificent utopias

We await like pink elephants.

 

Subtly goes stale the soul,

The culture rots like Roquefort…

 

O century of unreasoned delight,

The leafing-trembling spring,

Modernization of Hellas

And the decrepit novelty!


 

Flower of Ladies’ Bouquet

 

In ladies’ bouquet the Amiens’ beau mond

Louder than all rhymes the reseda.

Bronze-oxide blonde Exalarmonda,

Blooming with the balsamic star.

 

She’s sharp, like quintessence of species,

To her bravura needs the resonance,

And she takes lovers “master with trapeze”

And, so to say, savours mesalliance.

 

To convention she always throws: “shocking!”,

Lets out the waist extravagantly,

Vulgarly each tuxedo placed in lorgnette,

But not on each tuxedo the caliph.

 

Like oyster, swallows with appetite

The orderly’s sparkling tribute…

With all this – wears the title with taste,

To other cheek imparting his hand.


 

In Autumn-Cut July

 

July is brilliantly autumn-cut.

Ah, he leaves! Hold! Hold!

I lie on silk of green land,

Around – blondes, the rye’s braids.

 

O sky, sky! Ethereal your way!

O field, field! You – shipyard of dreams!

I’m one of a kind! I’m heavenly!

And God and worm are equal to me!


 

Elementary Sonata

 

O dear how I am sad! O dear how I am in woe!

I want to see you – sad and blue…

 

Sad and blue, I want you to hear,

I want to touch you, loving and dear!

 

I feel, as I dim, and near comes my silence,

I feel, that soon-soon will end my woes…

 

But, God! I forget my torment with which mourning!

But, God! With which pain I fathom my oblivion!

 

It seems, better to hope, although hopelessly,

Than to dead, in which dreamlessness, to rest tenderly - passionlessly…

 

O, spectres of hope – strange – and sweet, passionately sick,

O, luminous ones, dreamer with scorching soul do not leave!

 

I don’t need to see you, dear and beloved…

I won’t need to hear of you, blue and sad…

 

Ah, I fear to scatter my wished suffering,

We’ll see – it will disappear; wonderful – in awaiting.

 

But still better than eternal aspiration are the meetings,

But more lovely is centuries’ oblivion’s beating!


 

Kenzel

 

In noisy moire dress, in noisy moire dress,

On moonlit alley the sea you do pass…

Your dress is exquisite, your talma is azure,

And patterned with leaves is the road of sand –

Only spider’s paws, only fur of jaguar.

 

For refined woman always cloudy is night…

Lover’s rapture is ordered for you by fate…

In noisy moire dress, in noisy moire dress,

You’re so aesthetic, you’re so full of grace…

And who into lovers! And will you find a pair?

 

Wrapping legs in plaid expensive, jaguar,

And, sitting comfortably in gasoline car,

You trust life to a boy in mackintosh of rubber,

And with your jasmine dress close his eyes –

With noisy moire dress, with noisy moire dress!


 

Airy Yacht

 

I jumped in Stockholm on a flying yacht,

On flying yacht from birch of Karelia.

Captain, my lover, stood with smile on guard, -

Circled propeller of white night of April.

 

Leaning on the tiller, singing from Grieg,

He promised me lands where bloom apricots,

We arrogantly followed evolution of brig,

And I opened, like sail, the bronze braids.

 

Pestered Venus, pestered Saturn,

Two hours we walked on the icy Moon.

There in garden urn with bliss, take to me urn in the garden –

On the moon all are familiar, because all are dumb…

 

Flew around all the worlds, sang all songs,

To visit the very Palladin we were glad…

And when we saw that propeller is broken,

Our yacht in swimming ice floe lowered…


 

MYRRHA

 

In a birch evening corner

I sit with you on a linden bench.

And heart beats like a rabbit in snare

Moon shades, just like snakes,

On the sand, on the dense alley

In birch-jasmine corner.

 

Jasmine – my friend, my loyal favourite:

It breathed, baby, in heart of yours, -

Fragrantly now it speaks,

It chirps tenderly like grasshopper.

And pale yellow evening will be sanctified –

And you, jasmine, blooming favourite!


 

Lyre Fable

 

Turns white the bell-shape rustling –

Joyful is the summer wind.

We are passing by the field, half-silent,

  Felt on your head.

And on body the green silk, and – barefoot,

Quietly tear off leaf and, throwing

  Little bits,

You laugh, with the sun having touched forehead,

… Flock of blue antelopes

  Covered hillocks, covered grass.

But the stepdaughter of the deacon

Wriggling, like a lizard,

  The illusion violates…

  What lawlessness!

If you want to go to Andalusia,

Do not go to Poshekhonye…

 

-----

 

Smiling, we go to the rails:

  The wire of the telegraph

        Has buzzed;

Storms the cloud, -

  To the storm, deed.

 

-----

 

Try here, get mad!


 

In The Restaurant

 

Hustle in the road sparrows,

Green are curls of crotecus.

They from Ostand brought oysters

And from Cherepovets sterlets.

Listen, you, with a napkin,

Cover my table under linden;

And I will you advise

Not to stand like a stone lump,

But to treat me to the fish,

Asparagus and artichokes.

You understood? “Even spare

  Please

  And I’ll be precise.”


 

On The Islands

 

In landau motor, in landau gorgeous

I am riding past the Islands,

Drunk with the meeting vulgar face

Amid dames simply and “these” dames.

 

Ah, in each “fairy” I saw a fairy,

Sometime earlier. Not now this.

And from which do I come afire,

When coat nearby glistens?

 

How unanswered! How without question!

How sarcastic! Pain – everywhere and all!

Weedy in alleys, dewy in curtains,

And in each dandy lives Rocambole.

 

And what here beauty? And what here vileness?

Shameless and mournful is the night’s point.

To whom to throw the cheeky insolence?

To whom to tenderly correct the bow-knot?


 

Elegy

 

You, of a child of the school age’s mother,

And your husband will be general in a year…

But for what reason on the tired face

The voiceless angst’s indelible trace?

 

Necessary is the fracture for the heart:

To catch up… To return… The word to utter….

And terrible for You, that was in the past,

And past cannot be discerned from the future.


 

It Is All For The Child

 

Oh, my dear! It is still autumn, it is still autumn…

And to see you I dream of spring, turquoise spring…

What to answer my heart, inconsolable heart, if heart asks all of a sudden,

If heart moans: “Do you dream with green dusk? With dense woods do you dream?”

 

Till spring we are in parting. We can’t meet. We can’t meet.

If only by accident. If only in theatre.

If only in concert.

And it is without words. And it is relentless. And it’s radiant

And we’ll hurry to change brilliant sight…

Like, in envelop, a word…

 

You are always under guard. You are always under oversight.

You are always under custody.

It is all for the child… It is all for the child… It is all for the child…

I see girlfriend in you. I see woman in you. I see a person in you.

And dear to me is your cross – like your tear, like your hair comb…


 

Fantasy of Sunrise

 

It's morning. The fish headlong lunges

On hook in prattle of the dawn.

Like music appears the Sun, and

Like lilies awaken the swans.

 

The Sun over a marble villa

With blush of meeting turns red.

Transparent singer of Seville is

Singing "Titania" overhead.

 

The devotees of Russian poetess

Burn flowers for her like incense.

The dreamers are always homeless...

The dreamers in a patched dress...

 

In face ingeniously sculpted -

The untold beauty of goddess!

Hymn to the sun sung by the master -

"Hosanna" after "Hosanna"!

 

Singing by exquisite ladies,

Toasts sound after toasts.

Garlands of smiles on their faces,

Their figures swaying like stalks.

 

All nests in muttering, mumbling -

Trembling with diamonds is grass -

Your palms clap daringly, lovingly -

And to the sun swans will rise!

 


 

Courtesan’s Carriage

 

Courtesan’s carriage, in a brown horse,

Along coniferous slope lowers unto the beach.

That feet do not get wet, they need to get in shoes,

To keeper of the health is marked the young page.

 

The curly musicians must perform

Bravura mazurka. To lectern, maestro!

Will it be possible to make silent ladies’ souls

With resort orchestra from the melodious zither?

 

Cylinders shine in sun, brushed glossy,

And ladies’ toilets for shop windows are fit.

Courtesan laughs. She’s echoed by sun splashy,

How good it is to drink “mandarin cream” in buffet!

 

What has become the deed? To buffet, black coachman!

Garcon, improvising in five-o-clock to shine…

Courtesan’s carriage, still harder, harder, again,

And page to lady’s shoes, like fox-terrier, did lean…


 

From The Letter

 

I wait – can’t wait – for May and spring,

For flowers, smiles and thunder,

When have pulled, limping,

To dacha carts the furniture!

At, under mountain, a mill,

In luminous dacha, a table behind,

Parting with capital “mink,”

You will brighten with a forehead.

How it will be happy for you to jump

To the pond, in sickening shop,

To dinner children loudly to call,

Whisper to someone: “Come I will…”

And thus amusedly till dinner,

When fearsome are the rays,

To call the neighbour – the dreamer

With you to the distant keys…


 

In Birch Cottage

 

On the northern trout river

You live in the birch cottage.

Like Mother of God of the great Correggio

You’re blessed. In wig of silver

The dust from tapestry reliefs sweeps away

Your palace. You are dreaming, Madeleine,

With ostrich fan in hand.

Your fragile son of eleven years

Drinks milk upon a marble terrace;

With strawberry he painted his nose,

It’s sickening to you! In plaid you wrap yourself

And, as with disgust you frown the black brows,

Annoyed, losing your calm,

You suddenly see the bracelet of diamond,

Like marriage chain, on a brush hanging

Of own hand; to you soon… many years,

You’re married, you’re mother… All joy – former…

And future seems to you banal…

For what to wait? But morphine – or pistol?

Salvation – and madness! Kindle,

Love me, giving the former,

Mother and wife, as if to needle of hers,

Ask to love! In your whim braver!

Hopeless is sin – the shaking of hands

To him, who gives bliss and youth…

My trace to you alone on the snow

On the trout river’s shore!


 

Oblivion in Sin

All joy - in the past, irretrievable and evanescent

But in the present - prosperity and despair.

The heart is tired and thirsts in fire at sunset

Of love and passion - it's lured by freedom from care.

 

The heart is tired of prosperity's narrow confines,

It's in despair, in chains, in complete distress...

Despairs to dream, and to trust, and in darkened numbness

It pulses with sadness, in cast of laziness...

 

And life charms and conjures, and with the trail

Of family weekdays lures somewhere...

To heart's chagrin: it fears with its betrayal

To end its prosperity in sunset hour.

 

It is empowered with motherhood and with loyalty,

It fears to leave his loved ones like piteous orphans...

But there's no unison, and it beats in loneliness

And life passes, and it might tear the cold coffin.

 

Oh heart, oh heart! Salvation is in your madness!

While you can burn and beat, burn and keep beating!

Sin braver! May do-gooder come way of mummies:

In sin - oblivion! And there - no bullet or rail can reach me!

 

You're loved, sick heart! You're loved, loved all out!

Love in response! In greeting! Yes, love in ardor!

And be at peace: Live - rightly! And vanquish doubt!

Be joyful, heart: You're young! Beat loud and harder!


 

Nelly

 

In boudoir of angsty rouge Nelly,

Where under powder is ordinal, and on it Paul De Koch,

Where there’s Brussels lace… on the kerchief of flannel! –

Young teacher dreamed upon the couch.

 

Learned in opera and fell in love like a nobleman,

Ready to get married, he for all did decide.

Before her he holds, like a boy, on a string,

With her in the park he plays hoop and does ride.

 

He reads to her Schindler, devotes the cocktail,

Praising aviation, judges China,

And, in jealous unbelief, secretly aims at the constable…

Nelly unwillingly hears – “Better not be riding…”

 

“Philosophy of carnality” – Nelly tartly is thinking:

“I have lost faith in love, teacher Sir!

Oh, if on “Blerno” the couch had fitted!

Introduction – Gauntman, and finale – Paul De Koch!


 

Kin-Cato

 

You had not been in a tea home

Against the villa of advocate?

And on the bamboo table

Drank tea with you Kin-Cato?

 

What in the flowers of Eastern sunset

She read to you in tome?

With sharp eyes, like rabbits,

Looked at you Kin-Cato?

 

In the blooming of Corylopsis

You did not sit aslope,

Waiting, like from wishing was popping

With vial bush Kin-Cato?

 

Tell me, with which topics

You wife of frigate carried off?

Oh, probable, with golden daisy

Your torso was beautified by Kin-Cato!


 

Cousin Lydia

 

Lydia, you – soundless, Lipkovskaya. Lydia, you – a beautiful girl.

Slender, tall, graceful, you – crumble, you are – the smile.

From what are you short-lived? For what in ice is your ear?

Only for what so much pearl? Sooner scatter, my dear!

 

Red and white grasshopper, they don’t come to you, lilies of the valley:

They don’t come to you, believe me, lilies – for the whiteness thee…

Poppies, roses cheeky-insulting, and creepers curl like snakelings –

Hard to bouquet your girl’s waist, that herself it would be.

 

Fern in emerald shine, snow purple-white and fiery,

Elastic fir needles – it’s to you only attire,

To girl with old smile, silenced, but like sun, sincere

Like berries in forest, unnoticedly dying.


 

Autumn Berceuse

 

Day is bright. Lemon-leafed forest

In foggy tunic the trunks drapes.

I go to wilderness, under autumn berceuse,

I take mushrooms and bitter cranberries.

 

Who told me that I have a husband

And oatmeal child thrice?

This is nonsense! This is humbug!

Losing five combs, I lie on the grass.

 

The soul sings under autumn berceuse,

Hopefully waits and sweetly-sickly believe,

That he will come, my gallant Excess,

Will take me and brutalize maidenly.

 

And having satisfied hungry instinct,

Will return me to reality aimless,

Returning to me the invisible hyacinth

Lighter than willows and craftier than chrysanthemums…

 

I walk, I walk under autumn berceuse,

The place from dreams I can nowhere find.

I want that will die, that will disappear

Your home, where I – am a married bride!


 

Ego-Polonaise

 

Live, the living! Under sun the diamonds

Are braver, people, in their polonaise!

Like the fruit-bearing, like with golden pipes

My poetry’s rye sheaves!

 

In them waterfall Love and Bliss,

And Satisfaction, and Gorgeousness!

In name of Ego are world’s victims!

Live, Living – sing the lips.

 

In the whole Universe there’s two only,

And these two – one always:

I and Desire! Live, the living!

To you is foregone the deathlessness!


 

In Spreading Maples

 

In these spreading maples all summer we live,

In this lilac dacha let unravel the comforts!

How drunkenly to unite! To wait for amulet of love!

To believe, that to us in pleasure sing leaves and birds!

 

In these spreading maples there’s waterfall of inspiration,

Sun of mutual feeling, stars of languor of night…

I hear, my dear, beating of heart of lyre,

Know, that one wished not with you to depart!

 

You say, “I am tired.” You pray, “O, take pity!

Petting tire me, and I am sick from bliss …”

Is it all possible, if the waltzes of green

In these spreading maples makes brave the spring?!


 

Suicide

 

You ran out of the hall on the wind veranda,

Beautifully hanging over abyss and stream.

Made difference the roll of delight, remembered Ariadne,

Garland of white narcissuses they crumpled with dark arm.

 

You’re tired of the people, but can’t get away anywhere.

Abyss wheezed and howled. In river fisherman drowned.

From windows laughed the speech. In interim played orchestra.

Your face had become pale, and turquoise-violet the sight.

 

Like a shot, reeled the doors. Like wings rushed the tailcoats,

Crouped the dandy’s gang, but showed you – gorillas.

Like a chased fox, trembling in shiny darkness,

You bit someone and jumped from rails into abyss!


 

Be Calm

Be calm, my soft and delicate one,

Coyly loving and loved indeed:

You're my fragrant autumn,

Tender, sorrowful, one I need...

 

Only you give me balm and heal

Soul full of question and sin

And I into your spring-like fall

Will reach with my fall-like spring...


 

Coquette

 

In black hat in tea rose

Before mirrors you waltz

With the grace turquoise

And the reserve caressed…

 

Don’t want to count the years in metric,

And you look – but fourteen years.

With tea rose and the hat black

Deathless you are! World-woman you are!

 

And denunciatory tirade

Of envious ladies – let them be mad!

I ignore. With a tea rose

You – deathless, in black hat!


 

Ladies’ Club

 

I am in comfortable carriage, on springs elliptical,

I like to ride in golden noon into tea cup in ladies’ club,

Where tastily ladies gossip about society squabbles and quarrels,

Where dumb is not known as dumb, but smart one is surely dumb.

 

O, fashionable themes! Of you my angst will dissipate!

Ironically lips tremble, like jelly of strawberry…

“Indians – like pineapples, and pineapples – like Indians…” –

The Creole lady jokes, of exotic land remembering…

 

The lady mayor yawns, on the piano leaning,

And looks into the window, where raves intoxicating languid July.

Suddenly cobweb turns gold, like lazy prison of gloom, and

I, comparing you to all, love ladies’ club not why?


 

Evening Sketch

 

She walks along a trail into a mountain,

The sunset reflection on the face.

And on a wedding ring

The orange slides. White of the gates

Of shirt perforating.

Bewitched by spring,

She walks into the purple home,

Having become thoughtful over the stream.

In languor now is her soul,

And on the face there is calm.

Rolls of butter and tea chilled,

They meet at the table.

And on her faded face

On the prosaic earth

I read the contempt tender,

The slightly wily sadness.

The shawl off she throws,

And with lilac me she pours over.


 

Grateful Poem

 

You have swollen with child! You – the bud of the spring!

Soon a gold-haired daughter will be with me,

Why motherhood to know do you not fear?

Spit on all condemnation, like on vile piggery!

Rejoice boundlessly, with paradise baptised,

Be such a mother and a good girl!

To corrode the child – do you agree with me?

It is still, with the spring the nights to destroy,

Flower of fruits to unwind. This thought relentlessly

Worries me: thus criminal it will not be!


 

Seamstress

 

You come tired, unhappy, away fading,

And you sit in exhaustion, without wishes or words…

Open the newspaper – you frown, from yourself discarding,

Here not for the politics! Here not for the balls!

 

You worked the shining day for messaline bonnet,

(Here’s irony! For woman from the “messaline” kind!)

Ah, on your strawberry lips the grin caustic

Ran before the customer, whose ideal is – “pancake”…

 

In workshop – from quarrelsome girls – noise such as in a meeting,

The head aches and circles from chatty mistresses…

And you dream, my dear, of Valkyries and Vikings:

Working to the day, in evening – to the queens!


 

Rondo

 

Poisonous like a nymph is your perfume,

And daring, like my poems.

Delight of tasted Aphrodite is dew –

  Your perfume!

 

They languish, like the flesh’s sins,

On lapel of the frock poured by you,

Ignited the mosses of the feelings.

  Your perfume!

 

My eyes – they are aerolites!

In furs of the lover they are overthrown,

How voluptuous is the sting, just like the termites,

  Your perfume!


 

Cautionary Poem

 

The artists, fear the “bourgeois”:

Your gift of talent they’ll deprive,

Your sleepyhead from birth

With the hand-organ’s organism

The fire they will sand

In the soul, where law – is Lawlessness.

 

Beware of the apathetic girls,

With the smiles beamless - of the steel,

With face constant, like marble:

Their faces, from pseudo-antique,

From your bally-sick soul,

Threaten with unquestioning horror.

 

They do not forgive mistakes,

The impulse they despise,

They count him as indecency,

“Appearance of an foolish mistake…”

And genius – in the eyes – abscess,

Filled with the foul greatness!


 

Sea Memo

 

How much of secret sadness, hopelessness and emptiness

In the growing sea, running to me,

In the symphony silence, in malachite tenderness,

To me kissing the feet in silence faded-noisy.

 

Only here, at the surf, drowning the birds’

Unpretentious singing, illuminating the woods,

I will know, enlightened, the advantage of greatness

Of amphibious depth in the depth of the skies…


 

Ice Cream From Lilac

 

Ice cream from lilac! Ice cream from lilac!

Of half portion ten cents, four cents more.

Ladies, Sirs, is it needed? Not dear – may be without discussion…

You sing delicately, square: goods will come to the soul!

 

I have the creamy, the pistachio having sold…

Ah, citizens, do you not demand crème brulee?

Time to popularize delights, to refine tastes of people,

On the streets of kitchen’s spices, in verse having sung excess!

 

Lilac – voluptuous emblem. In purple-pampered bank,

Get cold, waterfall heart, in sweet and fragrant down…

Ice cream from lilac! Ice cream from lilac!

Try, boy with drink! And friend, praise to God!


 

Champagne Polonez

Champagne in a lily! Champagne in a lily!

With health and with wisdom it sparkles and shines!

A shot of Mignon with one of Escamillio

Champagne in a lily - a sacred wine.

 

Champagne in a lily bursting and sparkling

The wine contained in a flower's cup.

I glory in rapture the Christ and the Antichrist

With soul deified in delight of a gulp!

 

A hawk and a mourning dove! Reichstag and Bastille -

The sleep and the wakefulness! Demon and Lord!

Lily in champagne and champagne in a lily -

The lighthouse of oneness in sea of discord!


 

* * *

 

I’m genius Igor Severyanin

Intoxicated with my victory

I’m universally put on screen

I am approved heartily!

 

From Bizet to the Port-Arthur

I did catch the persistent line.

I conquered Literature,

Blew up, thundering, on the throne!

And – year behind – “I will,” did say

The year had flashed, and here – I am!


 

Dissonance

 

In yellow living room, from gray maple, with silk upholstery

Your Highness loves on Tuesdays the languid reception of guests.

In lady’s coat of comic color, brown-white one,

You offered to fine society an iris cake.

Tenderly breathed in the smoke the violet outline of archduke.

 

Your highness in your young age of thirty years

You have universal body… like bas-relief…

The fragrant soul, thoroughly hidden in silk rustle,

Is very convenient for prostitutes and for queens.

However, forgive us, Your Highness, the pranks of scarlet…

 

To your spouse, ambassador of Harlequin, bright is the government:

Highest qualities are thought and talent of diplomate…

But for me, like madman, is his Aristotle’s…

Like my poems for him, but eccentricity…

The best in him – Your Lordship!


 

Rehabilitation

 

You judged me because, hurrying,

To beloved woman, tired in labour,

I quit my tour, that with frantic pain

The whole soul to her did tear!

 

You also judged me because

I met the stranger on way home

That to love tenderly to her I did respond,

Like, maybe, no one!

 

But what in response will I say to thee?

I’m again with first – only and eternal.

How, so cordial, could you have judged me,

  For that I am a poet?


 

In Luminous Darkness

 

Tuxedoed, attired immaculately, the high-society gentlemen

Stupefying their faces, brought themselves into a room,

I gave a forced smile, sarcastically ash and darkness remembering:

A new poetic motif unexpectedly breaking the gloom.

 

Every line - a slap on the cheek. My voice - torture, atrocity.

Rhymes come together happily. Tongue shows the assonance.

I despise you fiercely, O all you dim luminosities,

And, while despising, I count on global resonance!

 

With light you're fogged over evilly, O the luminous audience!

Hidden from you, undeserving ones, is future's horizon you've sought.

In Severyanin's time, O all you dim luminosities,

It should be known that since Pushkin came both Blok and Valmont!


 

Poem About Fofanov

 

Take “Fofanov” in your hands

And to spring garden walk with him.

Your languor, angst, torment

Heal the tunes of his will.

 

Not understanding yourselves,

Like Mumm you will shine.

Under “May noise” of poet of May

And under May’s noise green.

 

Singing the sloppy lines,

Where the pattern is ravishing,

You understand the hints of dusk,

And all of which he does enchant.

 

You won’t be short-sighted to the moment, -

Will shine the spring and sun!

Take “Fofanov” into your hands

And to spring garden with him run!


 

May Song

 

Open up my hammock, pump it up!

We are two with you, alone we are,

And what is the business, that there,

Somewhere there, they don’t sympathize with us?!

 

May into window kindly dares.

It is fond and funny with thee:

(You do not fully understand me!)

Before poet May curried favor!..

 

He understands, that it may be,

That I, limitless strength concealing,

I will want – and I will fledge him,

Well, and no – nothing about him!

 

Pleasant to me in this year is spring,

And clear is the fame coming, -

Gloriously will May be sung!

Pump up the hammock! Swing!


 

Dacha Coffee

 

How tasty is coffee on morning of summer

In dewy-twittering garden.

Behind the flock, behind the last cow

Walks the shepherd, the cigar piping.

 

The cow is running behind him,

Like a broom, wagging the tail.

And beautiful, and healthy

Gives anthrax the girl.

 

Striving to leave the nurses’ hands,

To run where can see the eyes,

Plays up every teen,

To governess showing the nose.

 

Here’s Finnish rickshaw: in the cake

Unrivalled one who bakes

He carries “French ladies” and bread –

Costing the coin of five cents…

 

Cream into coffee I pour

And – young and kind-hearted and dear –

I open the morning envelope

Upon the hem of calico…


 

Seine Of Dreams

 

For me, like in a hut of fisherman,

To sit in cottage – catch the fishes, try!

In hammock thrown and a canteen

Looking on May through window I lie.

Upon the window sunnies the purple

Crème des Violettes. I – the pie boy.

And she, beloved, in the two words

Sings tenderly: “bayu-bye.”

 

Greenery goes green and goes gold,

And the leaves sing and tweet…

Whose bonnet is soft like a flannel?

Who with eyes will change the words?

Having made purposeless to you all goals,

I barely breathe, I’m barely alive.

With body, that drowned in my body

To bleed my veins – it is right.

 

And now, while the maples are leafy,

Tender, soft and smiling,

Sit in love and quietly,

By the hammock, right near me.

May is naughty in green and gold,

Give to it two liqueur shots –

And with purple magic will swaddle,

Falling, will give linden the cuffs!


 

Both Of You Are My Wives…

 

Both of you are my wives, and each has kids –

Both from me – girl and boy.

Girl’s mother in cabinet with dad,

And another I don’t know three thousand days.

 

Girl’s mother – is it hard or easy –

At me, with me, full in me,

And another’s mother is somewhere in freedom,

Maybe on the sea – on bottom, may be.

 

But her child, my boy little,

With mother is attached “for fifty three”,

Who will kiss his mouth’s coral?

Who is: I am innocent or guilty?

 

Ah, I would have taken the dear baby,

Little child into the cabinet close.

Girl’s mother! Word, word only!

It is cruel: you’re neither “no” nor “yes.”


 

In Jasmine Bushes

 

On banana, on strawberry

Grows the creamy jasmine,

With dope luxuriously-sugary

Recreated orchestra of Romanians.

 

The sink of ocarina.

Multicoloured sewing.

Oysters and mandarins.

In place of life – dancing-living.

 

Puffy-cheeked bourgeois ladies.

Chest – melon, brooch like toad.

Talking hand-organs,

For the penny imperial walks.

 

With the sham tunic

Chansonette, in foulness of mines,

With banana, with strawberry

Had waved, all jasmine.


 

Southern Gaud

 

All in black, all – arrow, all – sterlet,

With a cold bloodless face,

Broke into me you, the gaud,

Of the great nothing keeping silence…

 

Above with feet you threw the armchair,

On the back and on the floor sat,

All – ghost, all – Daryal’s tale,

All – tenderness and all – highhandedness?

 

Dust crept on the skirt’s velvet,

Angrily pearl sorrowed on the chest…

We were in room, like in a felling,

Among the seas shoreless…

 

When the heart seizure

Suddenly had shuddered thee,

I was in the guesses’ power,

And somewhere did sink the ship…

 

And you had come into the feeling,

Knelt down before my feet,

And woefully whispered, “How empty

There – where is everybody’s heart”…


 

Chansonette Of The Maid

 

I – the maid with all conveniences,

I receive fifteen rubles,

I do not steal, and I don’t bear malice,

And more than engineer honest.

 

Matter is this, that wife of engineer

Wants her husband to shortchange.

I’ll over her mock (I still dare!)

And I verbally give her a punch.

 

But she is with me cold-blooded,

She looks at me through five fingers:

I bear love letters of the beloved,

From her, and thereafter – for her.

 

What touches the master’s husband –

Sir engineer is very kind…

“I don’t love” – he says, “the Ultra-Scottish–

Here as example – for my wife”…

 

……………..

……………….

In results we quickly got along,

Here is month like husband and wife.

 

I get motherly confects

And Filip’s pies,

And – in envy of glycerin cook

Mister Nadson’s poems.

 

And long I counted and weighed,

That to her the post is convenient,

Here sated, and happy, and sweet,

Fifteen rubles we might add!


 

In Restaurant Over Kura

 

Georgian orchestra played in a restaurant,

It sang “Alaverdy!” to feasters:

From boutonniere the nail having taken out,

I wanted to gather the water.

 

Helped open the window to me the wind –

Stuck frame with rib into the night…

And in my face, like a red cat,

Kura snorted of something vile…

 

Spitting and squealing, her whiskered

Brown jaw caught the nail…

Georgians played and wildly sang…

Which girl is meant to fall?


 

Baltic Sea

 

Turns silver at the sea veranda,

Drowning in moon, not in the sea.

Swims the full-faced Skanda

In azure gallery to me.

 

  Like sail – the braids to open,

  Lycian opal is somnambulant…

  Eyes make the emerald question,

  Whose answer for which ones is lost.

 

Lost, is forgotten, like an echo

In azure of the sky and waves…

And of the moon, faded laughter

Full at the sailing are the eyes.

 

  Sails – sails through the galley,

  To me – not to me – nowhere.

  Moon – the sombrero of gold,

  And Skanda – moon and water.


 

Poem Of Spring Trills

 

With the spring wind blow the faces

And, sweetly smellings melt.

It’s easy and sweet for the bodies

For the spring’s amusements.

 

I feel the languor once

Again and endless tenderness.

Your lips, your knees

And sigh of the mimosa face, -

 

The face, for which are featureless

The elusive lineaments:

Snowgirl with sulphurous heart’s pace,

You – the snowy gazelle.

 

To look into your mermaid’s eyes

And in them to drown obliviously;

Tender violet flowers

Under them to notice precisely.

 

And to see the departing train

In way without stations, without platforms,

To read the tale without an end, –

The poet’s soul – without form.


 

In Hotel

 

In big and uncomfortable number of provincial hotel

I lie in insomnia on the cold evenings.

It’s terrible to me, it’s terrible, that my heart with woe will

Take out from its nest… broken in frame the glass is…

 

From restaurant is heard the quiet, music sorrowful –

Somehow well-worn the moon sonata,

That is such pomposity – truly, ugly - frequently -

With lily insulting the plethora of pomegranate…

 

And heard in this music is soul of women and girls,

In the life in possible ways meeting somewhere.

And cries, without tear cries in measured pitch-black silence

Of music, of the girls, of all, that may flower…

 


 

Awful Poem

 

O, unbearably sick places,

Where women, whom I lost,

To all, all time: the trembling of the leaf,

To sunny heat in the herbal gust,

In woods of aspen and lingenberry,

In moss’s whimper – their piteous cries…

How mournful is the screeching of the wheel!

How touching is the bleating of the calves!

On north are the meadows, and the groves,

And frets of souls, and villages inebriated –

Only to newcomer monotonous:

Easy for the northerners is their dissimilarity.

Sometime - it is so! – I will meet

The gloomy hag in the forest,

And she will bring close to my ear

The wily mouth. Later after fourpence

Will tell me the prophetic hand-organ

About my sacrifices, their fate.

Later I will accept the wood, like my last home.

You – accidental gypsy, my death!


 

Rondo

 

For you yourself to read in lemon boudoir,

Like yacht of dreams, having accepted and loved…

Except untrue words, instead of formulated arias,

  For you yourself to read.

 

To feel you in the purple negligee,

Crushing the future and the past, crushing

Secondary, and strongly to hit.

 

To be assured, that world is concentrated in the steam:

Just me and you, just us! And only for thee,

And only of thee, thy kingly sight crowning,

  For thee thyself to read.


 

In Carriage Of Esclarmonde

 

I ride in silver-spoked carriage of Esclarmonde

On the purple alley, falling onto resort,

And in the green suns the blonde locks radiate

Of evil-special Esclarmonde’s felt cake – hat.

 

Moet: crunchier wheels. Thoughtlessly and aimlessly,

The ocean absorbed for the sink-maiden.

He splashes in dessert – muscat-likely, -

Streams into brain and eyes, drunken like a man…

 

Blow up, like bomb, the sun! Tear, the blonde foams!

There is no more the ocean, has darted off in her!

Who carries name of sea and sun – of Esclarmonde,

Who lovingly changed the dream for me on the earth!


 

Worthless

 

You have tormented me, maybe yourself not knowing:

Maybe consciously, maybe having suffered;

I see you in fits and starts, maybe I will dine again

On eyes of one and each – again angst-python.

 

O, kind ruthless one! You, the profile shading,

Maybe alien, or familiar, with nose straight-deadly!

We evil-mindedly drowned the sensibility virtuous

Somehow to eternally wait for dumb timpani…

 

Listen, my alien neighbor! The condemned far away lady!

Wanting to insult me for delights without thought!

Suppressing resentment, I want you simply,

Like eagle – in radiant azure, like – to waterfall - current!


 

Valentina

 

Valentina, how much happiness! Valentina, how much horror!

Valentina, how much charm! Valentina, how much woe!

It was in a medicine college for a concert,

You sat in the vestibule for the sale of the posters.

 

Jumping from landaulette, by girls surrounded,

I strived upon a stage, but, stopping me,

Offering me program, and, with you spellbound,

Holding a moment, beholding your twist.

 

You came to me in interlude (don’t call it void)

With secret rose, with the red dream, with thunder azure

With eyes delighted and cheeky. You were in simple and white,

You spoke very quickly and like a dragonfly appeared.

 

This day! With it – a start. Telephones and postcards,

I was very merciful with beginning of poetess.

And then you had become favorite and candidate,

Conducted me daily upon the concert.

 

And later… Coupe. Village. Yuletide. Wood, much snow.

The frozen nights and the moon in epiphany.

Home. Tender and cozy. Epiphany without looking in return,

Thoughtless is Valentina, in love is Valentina!

 

All came, like it had come. And parting was awkward:

I’m “deceiver,” you are grumpy, that is the stencil.

Valentina, rogue! The devil sharp-witted!

You turned the devilish poem into pitiful madness!


 

Poem Of Days Of May

 

What days do now stand!

Ah, what is it for the days!

The garden blooms, twitters, rings,

Keep it Lord!

 

To grasshoppers there is no count,

Flying to the east.

The spring herself has outgrown,

And cruel is her growth.

 

By the sea, in linden’s shade,

On the shore she did stand.

I cannot in such days

Work, I can’t!

 

Ah, what for me to do with you?

The full sloth I am:

In such days I’m not my own,

Lilac – not in these days!

 

Quiet is the sea. Blue-smoothed.

And sky – like it.

Nothing to dream, nothing to wish.

Something is not given.

 

I wait for something, I wait for someone…

Thus passionately I wait all day long…

Lilac, lilac in new garden!

Lilac in garden of mine!

 

Bloom, shine, flame, my garden,

Lord keep thee!

What days now stand!

Ah, what days are these!


 

I Won’t Come Today

 

                                  Today I will not come: when

                                  I will come – I don’t know…

                                             Her telegram

 

“Today I will not come: when I will come – I don’t know…”

I rejoice in the spring, lilac, may, sun!

I rejoice that again the grass does grow!

“Give me my engine. Driver, to the islands!”

 

May I be irresistibly drawn to you,

I would like to forget that by you I am loved.

To sharper feel this spring day,

That it’s sweeter to pine… “Driver, in lilac, in lilac!”

 

I thus love you, that to be with you together

It’s heavy for me: you to me, your bride,

Thus gave much happiness, having absorbed me with you,

What rest from you midst flowers and the grass…

 

Mercy for me, I pray! Mercy I demand!

I cannot see you, and I do not require…

“Driver, can’t go to sea?.. Or on a star?..”

That somehow: “Today I will not appear.”


 

Barberry Poetry

 

Governess-miss

Carries into cabinet

In porcelain cups

Hideout d’epine vinette.

 

The unfilled cups

Maiden at the sight.

In the golden stove

Is English bisquit.

 

Society in cabinet

Of ten men.

To garden are open windows,

In garden, where there’s speech’s effluent.

 

Upon the birches shimmers

Of sky. O, caprice!

Waves, sky, mistress

The flowers of barberries.

 

And her highness

Has trained her lorgnette

Onto nature, becoming

Crème d’epine vinette…


 

Poem About Thousand First Acquaintance

 

Lackey and St. Bernard – ah, two baritones!

Returning to the rings at the door us they meet.

Camelias. Carpets. The silver of the lounge room.

The couch and the pouf. And six noiseless feet.

 

We two had come to her. She had been another.

He knew her, but I am presented at this time.

My restrained hello, and to Joe the St. Bernard the order

Is to leave and not to intervene.

 

The saloon talk, convenient for abbey,

For courtesans and bigots brave.

And we are not here: Alfred and Traviata.

And here is orchestra. And here is the parterre.

 

Thus: we involuntarily come into roles.

But the heart cuts for me the whetted compliment.

How sick is it to speak! How unbearably painful,

When you foresee another, another moment!

 

We know it ahead: and will be that, which is crumpled

Sometime, by someone, when an where – is not it the same?

And in horror, and in angst – Traviata and Alfred, -

We joke – how then! Cherishing our pain.


 

Overture

Pineapples in champagne! Pineapples in champagne!

Deliriously tasty, sparkling and bright!

I'm in something from Norway! I'm in something from Spain!

I'm inspired in bursts and I sit down to write.

 

Planes are screeching above me! Automobiles are running!

Express trains whistling by and the yachts taking flight!

Someone's kissed over here! Someone elsewhere is beaten!

Pineapples in champagne - the pulse of the night!

 

Among nervous girls and in company of women

Tragedy I am turning to dream and to farce.

Pineapples in champagne! Pineapples in champagne!

Moscow to Nagasaki! New York to Mars!


 

When The Ship Will Come

 

You have dressed with cloth of evening

And stand at the pool in the garden.

Watching, as the marble goes to moon,

And the channel trembles in it with moire.

Ships have put their bays with their anchors:

Brought the tropical fruits,

Brought the colorful tissues,

The ocean dreams they brought.

And when comes Brazilian cruiser,

Lieutenant will speak of the geiser,

And will compare, but this is intimate…

Singing something like an anthem.

He will talk about azure of Ganges,

About curses of evil orangutangs,

About cynical African dance

And of eternal flyer – “Hollandaise.”

He will show you Kamchatka album,

Where there’s culture not in germ,

Of tender friendship with geisha he will hint,

Of further nearness having gone quiet.

Roaring after his sea’s dream,

Having let out the peacock’s fan,

You will press to him with tender trembling,

Still more dearly  loving him.


 

Verbena

 

How smells the sea from the verbena

With the moon and the oysters!

Your cells are, like veins,

With the wave boat-bearing!

 

Whether you on the eyelids I kiss,

Looking into the mirror of eyes,

I see the certain charming dream,

In which fresher is the sea.

 

With the insatiable cold

There, where there’s salmon speckled,

Where with Hellas erupted the seagull,

To the sea across I’m attracted.

 

I will not only come to sea,

I’ll try the boats to rope in,

I’ll argue to flame with the charmed dream,

I’ll call to you before the sea!

 

Will blow before verbena wave,

With your blouse and your braid.

And, with unclear call unchanged,

I will return to you with angst.


 

Torment Of The Storm

 

Pines swung, pines did sound,

In the white-gray wept the sea.

We went quiet, like we had gone dumb,

The little home went quiet suddenly.

 

Leaning the windowsill upon,

I froze in the thoughtless thought.

The crazy horses in the wind gallop

Rushed somewhere – foam did shaft.

 

You thrilling lay on the bed

In semi-chill, in semi-insanity.

Thundered the pines, the sea wept,

It was for garden quiet and gloomy.

 

The leaves of yellow acacias cringed.

Red puddles. The red sand.

Will we dare to laugh in the morning?

You are alone. I am alone.


 

Poem Of Opened Eyes

 

Harps the wind – further is Narva,

Blue is the sea, golden is silence.

Soul – like a sail, soil, like a harp.

Of what do you clank? What for you’re flying?

 

It’s fresh and torrid. It is light and bold.

You need something. For something you awaited.

To commit cruelty dared the soul!

The soul to reject lie had dared!

 

In past – mistake. In past – uselessness.

In past – ugliness. In the past – the shame.

In the future – feelings of her pearliness.

And in the present – only the break.

 

Ah, for this harps the wind,

Further is shore, sings the tide!

Ah, for this I will live within the world

And passionately I thirst, opening eyes!


 

Poem Of Rejection

 

She had sent me a blue letter,

She sent me a letter blue.

And blow jasmines, and fly oboes,

And fly oboes, and moon pours.

 

Of what she writes? What sways in heart?

What sways my tired heart inside?

Calls to itself – and more does not write,

And does not write anything about…

 

But I won’t go on Wednesday or tomorrow,

Not tomorrow not on Wednesday will I return the answer.

I won’t come to her, I won’t answer her, -

She is late, I love another!


 

Poem Of Hopelessness

 

I’m depressed by something, I’m cramped by something,

For the ringing songs no fitting words.

And may in this year not formerly – wonderful,

And life – half-wake, half-sleep, half-madness.

 

I’m insulted by something, I somehow went tired,

I was disgusted by little people…

I dreamed of peoplelessness, as of wonder:

No one of them the sweet did tell!

 

How bitter from envy, from flattery, from intrigue,

From all imitation! From all beginnings!

From all crownings is debunked my genius!

I reached them without mercy, it’s heavy to me.

 

Uncalled retinue tormented all year

With its worries, dirt, gossips …

And, are they equal to ugliness

Hope of spiritual, mercantile worries?


 

Poem Of Blue Evening

 

I went with you in chaise

Wide and columnar.

The blue birds did fly,

Evening was blue-indigo.

 

The river ran from forest

And hid, the tail flashing.

O, river, river – flow fast!

O, ghost, with bush grown!

 

The gray foxes danced

On black paws pas de grace.

I went with you in chaise

And ranted – which one once?

 

Meeting with us no man:

Desertion dead and quiet.

And only hut of lumberman

Just like fir, just like mouse.

 

Look: turn blue your eyes,

And has turned blue pale face.

And only turn spring your lips –

That, I their malosity sang…

 

By habit - not by wishes…

We need to go with thee,

And for this we ride in chaise

Columnar and country.


 

Don’t Fly Away!

 

Fly upon the blue sea

The white clouds, frolicking…

You come to the home slowly,

Half in sorrow, half-laughing…

 

Smile, going pink palely,

From lips like a moth does fly…

You get numb, morethea,

And your sight is near and far…

 

You see island, far-off island,

And the shuttles, and the sails…

Lightly and simply you are quiet, -

And you – wind from under the hand!

 

Do not fly, accept the languor

Come to me in the earth’s bond…

Fly upon the blue sea

The white clouds, frolicking…


 

Three-Star Triolet

 

Let’s go to park, Marussia; will dress in white color

(He comes thus to you! You’re beautiful in white!).

Quietly on the beach by the bay we will sit –

We’ll come, Marussia, to park; we’ll dress in the blue color.

 

And I will be with you – your knight, your poet,

And I will sing you delightedly-jealously;

Let’s go to park, Marussia! Will dress in color scarlet:

He is thus to you in face! In scarlet you’re beauty!


 

Poetry About Gogland

 

When, in the sunset hour, from the cliff

After the sun, and still before the stars,

Afar in the bay of Finland

Is seen Gogland after seven hundred versts.

 

I had not been to island any time,

Nothing did I hear about him.

Probable: rocks, the sky, the pines,

And fisherman huts the rocks between.

 

To neighbours, my dear, we will turn,

To silent, frowning fishermen,

We will ride on a boat with motor

Far, to barely visible shores.

 

I’ll take into the wavy road

Hundred rubles, you, my dreams.

But, you will take, trusting in God,

Barely taking yourself with thee!

 

Here and all. We didn’t need bigger.

This all, that we must demand.

Island. Home. Poems. Marussia near.

And I will exchange copper for the bread.


 

It Is Scary

 

It’s scary! – it is one and same:

Conversations, dinners, barbs,

Greengrocer, walk, sea, dream,

Gramophone, angst, mugs of the neighbors,

Mail, telegrams about victories,

And the same maple in the garden…

 

From window the brown arable land

With grandiose tile of the chocolate

Upon the green cloth of the grass.

Where today’s and where yesterday’s

Day? To whom delight from them will be?

I do not know? Do know ye?


 

Poem Of Annoyance

 

Not to calm down and not to get better

To me in this place, always another.

I am all ill, I don’t like all,

Of another landscape I dream still.

 

Here’s garden on the street, here’s multi-giving,

Here is pressed as a slave the home to home.

The neighbour with Boccaccio torments me, -

O, waltz of Boccaccio a hundred times!

 

Forest in alienation quite substantial,

And did not see the dear sea from far away…

I am in yearning, I am in tormenting,

All in polonation of another land…

 

I wanted to jump out with the young mornings

From stifling room, on the grass to fall

And, in the rapture, rattling with the strings,

To shout “I’m alive!” to the delighted soul.

 

To read silently the free verse,

My breath! My soul!

To kiss without tiredness nature’s face –

Bouquet of lily of the valley, breathing all!

 

But is it thoughtful in implementation

To bring the fiery dreams,

Since curious in “genius’s dacha”

Scurry about and cannot leave from them?


 

What The Happiness

 

What the happiness – to be eternally two!

And the unwanted visitors not to be awaiting,

And not to weave the surrounding conversations,

What the happiness – to be eternally two!

 

To be alone with another is not easy,

But with the dear is intoxicatingly sweet:

In the skirt is liked every crease, and

Sings the seltzer, like “Click!”

 

And “today” for us – like “yesterday,”

But for us “tomorrow” another I don’t need:

For us it is all happy, alert, healthy!

Sea, forest and fan of winds!


 

Poem From Afar

 

You with the icy eyes

For half a year are numbing me.

  From the blue-leafed woods

  Lives me familiar to me.

 

He’s full of what, with which I’m empty…

With what he’s empty, in me…

  Like lumberjack, for me he’s waiting,

  You wait for him, like forest sleep…

 

The spring will be changed with the spring,

And autumn – autumn. But I

  And you, with me living,

  All honor with additional I.


 

Poem Of What Was, May Be, Did Not Happen

 

With every day, fifth month, you’re thinner and thinner,

Still tenderer is the paleness, still sharper is sight.

Each day, fifth month, his toilet not having finished,

You, lying down, study the Ottoman design…

 

And on the tender sight and on the tender speeches

I do not know another answer like quiet –

Quiet are the blooming bonds, quiet are spring’s chills,

Silence, in which so much sting you hide…

 

And still not long ago, in bloom of lilac days,

In days of purple lilac and violet grapes,

You, like a furry squirrel, in gold illumination,

To moth upon the park, singing “Carmen”!

 

Fervently you had talked, kissed you gloriously,

Laughed so loudly and looked luminously!

You now do not breathe… And still recently

Was that which could not be, pitifully.


 

Poem Of Last Hope

 

Not strange are poetry evenings,

The carnivals of deathless art,

In land where “tomorrow” is worse than “yesterday.”

To which, there maybe, there won’t be time,

In land, where after landslide – landslides?

 

But is not stranger than these evenings

Coming to them? For whom? – fools.

Shouting in heat of plague: “The feasts!”

Or straight the fanatics of gifts

Of poetry, goddess more azure than all!

 

Poet – always poet. But you! You!

Occasional or looking forward? Who thou art?

I have only returned from Moscow,

Where applauded me people-lions,

Who are ready to give life for the arts!

 

What champagne, sparkling ecstasy!

What in trembling inspiration of faces!

You, thousands of inflamed eyes –

Incensed, mournful – I believe in ye:

Eyes of wounded Russian youths!

 

I believe in you, and that means – in the land.

Yes, I believe you, across the elements.

That grows the shaft, uplifting the wave,

Which will merge in one,

And then – I believe in Russia’s life!


 

By The Stage

 

We went by Narma under convoy,

Having been under “arrest” two days.

Narva with the “wail” had carried,

Having freed the run from ice.

 

Closed in the freight carriage, -

Through Vesenburg and through Tans –

In some nightmare forgetfulness,

All time we heard about “Shnans.”

 

We stiffened. Feet were freezing.

A hundred men of us had been.

What for the horrible roads

In the less awful century!

 

Farewell, the Russia’s wiles:

We’ll drive into another soil…

We cannot run: around – rifles.

The world’s concluded, we are in jail.


 

Yamburg

 

Always dirty and cynical,

Soldier’s, drunken, areal,

With a culture’s foreign age,

You die before the puddle wave.

 

And, not sorrowing of silk of meadow,

Delights of plow not having recognized,

You, for whom mirrors the Meadow,

You peer into ditch’s turbid shine.

 

Ten moans of the living iambus,

Vituperative and mean

I throw magnanimously, Iamburg,

Blurry among blurry, to thee!

 

To you, who by the stage tomorrow

Will send me to Eastland,

I beat on shoulder, I shape on paw…

Crawling! You to me gave flight!


 

Candy Daughter

 

German lieutenant with the candy daughter

Comes to the meadow to have a picnic,

Sarcastically the bee with the spot of amber

Soars above him, like an evil twin.

 

They admire the bed lawn,

There, where the grass under, and where, and above.

And – the junker coat with the baize caring

Or factory passion – into sweat does drive one.

 

Thus in the smouldering noon upon the meadow smouldering

To smoulder gathers the candy daughter…

Like the July Soch she is full of desires:

In her eyes, lips, in all – complete Soch…

 

Here passion is saturated, and wiped accurately

The Romanized German the moisture and the dust…

And at confectionary will meet the confectioner –

With the open pride – like bandage and contacts…


 

Taffey

Where are you now, soul sad and overwrought

With smile that's snide but also is merry?

How in this newness, sorrowful and blurry,

Can you exist, and breathe, and be in thought?

 

Your lips adorned with tapestry that stings -

Your eyes in which there's laughter and there's sorrow -

All draped in furs, are close to my soul

And closer to my soul's silver strings.

 

O strange one! O the sorrowful! In thee

There's something luring! Yes, you are illumined

With lyricism of soul in perfume,

O lily in a Bacchus revelry!


 

Rescreen Of A King

 

My purple cloak from now,

In silver the velvet of beret,

I’m chosen by the king of the poets

On the tedious midges’ jealousness.

 

The luminaries do not love me,

To them is inconvenient my talent:

The lumberjacks had betrayed me

And more do not weave garlands.

 

To me the delight and adoration

And glory’s fragrant incense.

Mine – love and the song-singing! –

With the unreachable poems.

 

I am so great and I am so certain

In me – I’m convinced so,

That I will forgive all and each conviction,

I will give the honorable bow.

 

In soul – of impetuous hellos

There is no count.

And chosen from the kings of the poets,

And for subjects will be light!


 

On The Skis

 

To the east, straight, to Udreas,

And to the left – to Isenhoff and Marts,

Dressed in the sun, like in cuirass,

I love to slip the steps with skis.

 

The wheels of sticks, resting against

The blue-shining March crust,

Give racing, and – a black crane –

I slip, frequent in movement of the skis.

 

O, sport of skis! And sing will I

Your passion, freedom and boldness?

It’s sultry for me in March, like in July!

Leaf senses through the branches’ goal!

 

And, cheerfully moving the sides,

I flatwise clap with the snow of skis,

And all I wave, I wave with hands,

As if with the two wings!


 

Yury’s

 

Where’s Embach, drooping his shore,

Pours with the ground Livonian,

Like cultural centre Yuri did grow,

Thus alive and cordial.

 

He, having been from Tartu called,

German spirit did not deflower.

In my poems is found a band

And Yuri’s, in the measure of power.

 

Oh you, hundred-year-old nettle,

Tell us about the previous feast,

About the taste of the student beer,

About the clang of rapiers of students;

 

Tell us about the eyes of Gretchen,

Blue sentimentally,

About the arbor in the park decrepit,

About horses, deeds with thee…

 

About the romantic epoch,

About the knighthood of the former times,

And intoxicated are the former sighs

And so serene had been the dream!..


 

Berceuse Of Lilac

 

When lilac sea, having purpled its horizon,

Will think, in evening mirror having reflected lemon moon,

I pose question to nature, but, it me not having answered,

Shines in numbness of sleep, and beautiful is its dream.

 

Night, fanned with white lily, flies, like a white swan,

And disappears as a white fairy, like white in the spring,

What thirsts pitiful planet with its music to kill,

Fraternizing golden sunrise, ruddy bells.

 

These aromatic paints, like filigree of moods

I feel with white night at sea, sleeping in the glass,

When, not drowning, in lilac drowns lemon of the moon

And, exhausted of itself, lilac caresses all on earth.


 

Alexander IV

 

Yes, he is a poet! Yes, he is a fanatic,

Idealist stile decadence!

Upon the rope the clown tragic,

But ideality – is not balance.


 

Parting Prayer For Petrograd

 

Beyond decrepit Narva, after two hundred versts,

Like the bloodied pirate,

All stomps upon the refined place

Ending Petrograd.

 

Awful city – ghost!

Rebellious slave! Live corpse!

Fulfil predestination:

Accept your fearful end!

 

In prayers of your liturgy

There’s no request for your salvation.

You’re dead with death of Peterburg, -

Abandon dreams of resurrection.

 

Epoch of this parade –

In shining of holiday palaces

There’s nothing for Petrograd:

Oh, city – crypt of corpses!

 

Your frightening nearness –

Knife raised above us.

Your illness, city, your dampness –

With what we’ll multiply your powers!

 

You’re cursed. Above you curses.

You’re schooner without steering.

Open refined embraces,

Earth for you holding.

 

And let with another foundation

The granite of beautiful city

Be: our nation

Another way will keep thee.


 

Introduction

I'm nightingale: no traits I carry

And without special depth I sing.

But everyone, from crone to baby,

Will know me, singer of the spring.

 

I'm nightingale, I am a graybird,

But like a rainbow is my song.

I only have a single habit:

To other lands to lure the throng.

 

I'm nightingale! What for, then, so

Is godless critic with his scorn?

Seek, swine, the treasure in a trough,

And not in garlands made of thorns!

 

I'm nightingale, and, beside singing,

No other use can come of me.

I am so wondrous beyond reason

That Reason bows before my feet!


 

Est-Toyla

 

Two hundred versts from Petrograd,

From a station seven versts,

The poet’s soul is to you glad,

The village in the fir forests!

 

There shimmer evening dawns,

There near are tones to pearls,

And tenderly the ocean comes

To the dizzy shores.

 

Like the seductive swill, -

Sorcerous nectar of sea fairies –

Pours me to itself Est-Toyla

With sea branches and waves.

 

Greetings to you, salmon and sprats,

And shells, and voice,

Knowing me on the escarp, -

Oh, my dear forests!

 

For long I know the place,

And in dreams I see frequently it…

Oh, heart! To sun! To sea! To May!

To Est-Toyla in fir forests!


 

Then And Now

 

In evenings of matiola

She made us drunk, like wine,

And with lines to ease of Aeolus

It was judged to turn round.

 

We went to picnic in the night,

At the bonfire crawfish caught,

Pulled the hood and barely went

To bed at dawn.

 

At resort, the second summer

With them I did spend.

These were the days, when candy-maker

For the cake had angst.

 

When the child still risked

In the carriage to ride,

When Herr Bryuckman in guesthouse

Openly sold the wine…

 

Day stood for thirty papers,

And three silver rubles,

That may now appear

In the king’s palace!

 


 

By the Sea

From sea blows the Finlandean gale -

The penetrating wind of north -

And evil makes magic on the sail,

Tipping the edge of simple boat.

 

Seeing the waves, I walk alone

Over the cliff that overhangs,

All is green, and there is snow.

I look at pink skin-colored sand.

 

The snow covers entire foothills

From mountain tops until sand dunes.

And after him screams with the distance

The sadness of the color blue.

 

The green above, beneath - blue-yellow,

The in-between, chilly and white.

The sky is made sea to inhabit:

In desert, desert is imbibed.

 


 

Leitmotifs

 

All day to dreaming I surrender,

I give my life over to dreams.

I am no soldier, salesman, dandy -

I only sing and sing and sing!

 

What use is kingdom and porphyry?

What use is any role for me?

Beyond the supple fence of lyre -

I am the ever-reigning king!

 

What for, your cogitations' cold?

What for, political dissents?

The spring day's warm and full of gold -

And I look with a springtime gaze!

 

Be blessed, grass, grow tall and mighty!

And you, the green-appareled waves!

No sinners: Everyone is righteous;

Most righteous still - he who forgave!


 

Madis

 

Nightly from “Quo vadis”

The consumptive musician played.

To him heeded the sorrowing Madis –

Local colonists and fishermen.

 

“How in the net goes the herring

And somehow expensive it will be?”

Shines the moon on gloss of lacquer

Of the boot that is chic.

 

“And the salmon speckled

Will be caught in pood with the weight?”

White is the sail of the hat,

Trembles the spider fetters’ scrap.

 

“And suddenly midst bony vinegar

Sky will a sturgeon send to me?!”

And the pick promotes dreams

In the moon silver-sapphire.


 

Bluer

 

Worrying, today the wind,

Like a dynamite explodes.

And, like the freight train, the sea

Going, heavily makes noise.

 

Thus blue, like the sky

Like sapphire, on south of south,

And don’t demand blue light:

Bluer than it, doesn’t know the earth.

 

So blue, dense,

Like night in the December stars.

So blue, thus,

Like in dawn the gazelle’s eyes.

 

“None bluer,” thus on the aspen

Twitter the foreign leaves:

“Like cornflower, you, sea, are blue!

Like sky, you are bottomless!”


 

March

 

March – just like May: all snow has melted;

Dried are the roads; the fields

The ray of spring with warmth worn out, -

And anew the ground is green.

 

The sea and the day have desoldered,

Again in them the calm was blue;

All to creation was revived,

And again the dust has moved.

 

On sun of alder woods the stop

Shines, like the chalk in gilt,

And nightingale – Estonian “oopik” –

Has the desire to sing…

 

Again rings and reigns

My poem, although it – old man almost!

In sunset hour is red again

The smile of Emarik full of sorrow.

 

And night – Night. Unheard

To us nears the crowd white

In lilac cape luxuriant

And in the pale-blue hat…


 

The Final Glory

 

My equivocal glory

Is equivocal not why,

That I am wrongfully exhalted, -

Not on the talent mine, -

 

And because, the call clear

To conventions – in my poems

And exquisite surprises’ row

In the capricious words.

 

Vulgarity in me they sought,

Having let one from the sight:

Here’s who the square paints,

That with areal brush does write.

 

Scolded the styles’ mixing,

Though in mixing is the style!

That, with which you did not treat me!

Like me did not give “pastilles”!

 

The unanswerable dilemmas

I resolved, rumor despising,

My two-thought topics –

Equivocal by being.

 

Let the canon critical

Draw me into law his own, -

I am the ironic lyrical:

Irony – is my canon.


 

Drawing With The Needle

 

The nut harpsichords,

And reflected in the console mirror

The little cousin’s figure,

Twittering on their Ramo…

 

In corner with rocker of the pillow

Dadlo is more relaxed than Didlo.

On it is vial that went dry,

With which is flowering the heart…

 

Sailed barely the candles pity,

Like shoulders – forehead white and pink.

Window opened in the garden. There evening.

From curtains the heliotrope swims.

 

In tearful fog all the notes,

As if the points of silver…

And the girl’s heart – in the romance,

Furtively yesterday reading…


 

In The Village

 

In village, where light and holy

I will to nature give the soul,

I am scared of perversion

Of acting dames of capital.

 

And here – where’s field, wood and books,

And by God alit home –

There are more disgusting intrigues,

Capital of Gomorra and Sodom.

 

I am not moaning’s lover

Or whining’s, but evilly loving to remember

Their triumphal carnality

And how with her it’s slippery.

 

The preaching not loving

And morality despising,

I cannot without indignation

Remember their dirty passion…


 

At The Sologub

 

Lived Sologub in dacha of Magyar,

The beloved, old Sologub.

In them magic and bliss are covered,

Who’s poisonous and tender-rude…

 

Thus in Toyla he lived two summers

On distant dacha, on the fields

And cemeteries, and had been this

Living for me for many miles.

 

From Veymarne to him to come

I did not like in hour of sunrise.

When, as it seemed to me, the comfort

To look for diamond in dew of grass…

 

And went from the station, reading

Poems to her, through the chill.

Blazed the young soul,

And I could not catch a cold…

 

I came, when sleeping were all

Still on the dacha, and in garden

He walked half day, and in the opal

He smelled the fog’s reseda…


 

Postman

 

Thus on the highway, with tires’ peg,

But on the trail through the linen,

Thus with the country road packed

On bicycle rides the postman.

 

He’s known to all. He is old Pernick.

He serves thirtieth year here.

Letter from Schepkina-Kupernick

It gives me in the window.

 

I invite on the terrace

Him, tired, catch,

That would take out heresy or kvas

And bite in his ways.

 

He enters very delicately

And the chair to the table moves.

And sea is in sunset blissfully,

Alike to the scarlet glass.

 

Concentrated and equal

The Tokay wine he drinks.

What writes Tatyana Lvovna?

But, anyway, it’s dark, it seems.


 

Love Is Causelessness

Love is a causelessness. Thoughtlessness even.

To love for a reason? I love for I feel.

Love is like a troika, demented and rabid,

Rushing toward a ship that is leaving to sail.

 

Where to? Does not matter. I like aimless journeys.

Magnolias blooming... Wandering ice...

Fly onward, my troika, in path of a snowstorm,

Where my ship gets ready for watery flight.

 

Stomp out, my dear troika, discretion and reason,

Smoke with a fire, flaming, foaming and white!

What for? For no reason - my heart's drunk with freedom

From reason. The ship leaves. On it I'll take flight.

 


 

Rondo XX

 

While it’s not late, give me the answer,

I pray you humiliated and in tears,

Far away, with mimosas staring:

Yes or no? Yes or no – answer?

Poetically “yes,” and no – it is prosaic!

 

Merged dreams, but differently beat

Our hearts: dims the sky of light…

Oh, give me answering sign,

While it is not late…

 

Thus afar, life has turned to delirium.

And lightning, and thunder rumble menacingly.

And thus is late. And thus for tens of years

You are afar, but you’re draamy with me.

While I’m not a skeleton give me the answer…

While it is not late!


 

Moon Glares

 

Moon tears, clinging light to somnambulists’ linen,

Light linearity of lilies, in love with the prison

Of sticky green leaves. In waves flights of flounders,

Flat, evasively-bodied. And Madeleine from afar.

 

Laziness of ramifications of maple, faded scarlet.

Pale-yellow meadows, full of sweet strengths.

Ranunculus lutes. The violet opal in veins.

Dear white swan in light opening of wings.

 

Better to slide smoothly to sunny Graal.

The moon-glare rabbits it’s easy to catch in atlas

Of dresses violet in in sequins. Fiery likeness of real

And, on swings with realism, I cry with sadness of eyes.


 

Painted Ones

 

They're "red" today, and they're "white" tomorrow -

Ah, no tapestry! No flowers, this!

Tiresome to me to the point of nausea,

Small people hideous and turned to beasts.

 

Lowly today and tomorrow lowly,

Today the thieves and tomorrow too.

Vile scoundrels now and vile scoundrels formerly,

Will provoke any revolt for you.

 

Ideas foolish, dreams, all in vanity,

That in their theory is way to god.

They all are colorless in their entity -

Today they're "white" and tomorrow "red"!


 

Poem of the Reason for Cheer

We live in astounded wonder

At change of contrasting events.

Vienna's horrors and hunger

Threw us into chills and cold sweat.

 

And that, which we left on the east side -

Unfathomable to the mind.

In some times and dates you are trusting,

Not knowing yet how and why.

 

You aren't weak in the soul, I am sure,

As you lean over life, like an urn:

In a republic miniature

The big order has been born.

 

Perhaps we are broken in hope

And thrown into an abyss:

We're sated, we're sated, and so

We're ready for faith and for bliss.

 

We trust - we can't not trust, I found!

We wait - we can't not wait in our turn!

That world will in that measure be crowned

Which divine grace will return.

 


 

Poem to Luminous Brother

 

To birds and to poets the Lord all their sustenance gives:

I don't reap or sow, but for a second year I exist.

And for kind song-poems the people who're also kind

Will forgive your errors and sins, too, if any they find.

Who needs the art now? Who needs it - I do not know,

But to me it's air, and I keep singing so.

And radiant someone - not Russian, Estonian - stranger -

An angel of God? Follows me and protects me from danger.

In art he believes, and to me he is brimming with love:

"Be yourself, poet: Sing all your songs, stay alive!"

And like a poor bird, poet is glad of alms in his plight...

O luminous brother, I sing you with song of delight!


 

Poem of Despair

I know nothing, I trust in nothing,

I no longer in life see its brighter side.

I approach my friend as if he were a lion

I need nothing else. I am bored and tired.

 

Someone knifes someone, smothers another..

Everywhere, cheating, lying and greed.

Would eyes not see and would ears not hear!

Lermontov! Weren't you right - "what in world is good?"

 

Even thought is corrupt, even love is deceiving.

There's no fulfilled dream. All is smoke and mirrors.

I see no joy in living, see in life no meaning.

I'm feeling horror. I master fear.


 

Poem Of Heartache

 

From the dim revel newspaper,

Dry and tendential,

Like we, the biscuits military,

And afterwards – evil,

 

I will recall that in the world

There’s enmity as in the past,

And all the world forgot the world

For long and for all time.

 

All this little consoles

That, in whom melts intellect,

The earth exiled the tongues of gods,

Accepted prose’s dialect.

 

And as a result I read here,

That Sologubov was arrested,

That name in the thin aroma,

And who in wisely-stingy words

 

That Leonid Andreev had died,

To bottom cup of drink,

Having fanned with thought such a height,

That was called interplanetary:

 

That died of typhus Sologubov

The dumbest death of all,

Like yacht of joy – from reef,

And like from bullet – nightingale;

 

What he, whose ardor is magnificent,

And spirit, like flame, hoisted,

O, old young man, always Repin

Is pawned in Finland.

 

Sufficiently and such news,

That interrupted the heart,

That in this blissful place

Blue air had become dark.

 

Mohicans, now leave,

Last one of dear country…

The coming – one in the fog…

Alas, gaps are not seen…

 

Although I further would not see

The Fedor Kuzmich dear?

The face I won’t near impetuously

To his face, love whisper?

 

What for to him then is my hope

On meeting of heavy years?

Decay, the final clothes!

You, wind, sweep up my trace!

In Russia there’s familiar thousands,

But near. More ill is thus,

When they died in the thunders

And lightnings of cursed days…


 

Poem of Old Rhythms

 

O you the ancient rhymes and rhythms,

Seized on by many poets,

The banal, cheap, and puny ones,

Cliches overcooked and boiled!

You sound with the guitar strings,

With rhythms and rhyme impoverished,

Than all new things more beautiful

To my simplistic soul!

 

You were under Derzhavin,

You were under Nekrasov

You were under Nikitin,

And under Tolstoy too!

Oh you - just like an avalanche!

And though you were discarded,

And though new ones are written -

You burst into my book!

 

I greet you, my dear loyal ones,

The fully tried and tested ones,

The musical and flowerful

And most beloved by me!

Exemplary companions

You dear ones, you tender ones,

The happy and the sorrowful

The nightingale-like rhythms!


 

Poem Of Prosaic Soil

 

Ah, people live without poems,

People live without songs,

And spitefully call luxury

The skilful music of lines.

 

Ah, people live without icons,

In a godless soul without Lord.

For them alien shades of ink  -

Just gluttony, slumber and talk.

 

And even – here, in my home, -

In holy idol of the poet –

They are here weighed down by a dream,

Seeking to make soundless my home…

 

Alas, even lady and this

Will not find compassion for me…

And nowhere will I leave:

Nobody loves the dreams.

 

And here one profiteer just, -

Thief, executioner, “ideate” –

Eats the fruits of success,

Looking down for a talent.

 

Grow stale the hearts of women,

There’s no more lyricism in them –

Dancers, groom, people…

Love – the vestige of a fool…

 

Life nasty-sober became,

And greed – the ideal of all.

Stomach trampled the shrine,

Offering his law.

 

Artist for all – man

Lazy, useless, empty.

O, sober worker, dry one,

In art not believing for century!


 

Sonnet XXXI

 

Exquisite, like resident of Vienna,

In lady of Hungarian, in dress bleugendarme,

Spraying on herself vial of vervain

She walks – in her is especial charm.

 

In her approach golden caravans

To admirers with products of all firms…

Just Don Juans, just pockets torn,

Take with the eyes of the screens.

 

Graceful, Viennese, charmer,

Village before him and the duchess,

Something special is in there!

 

Sophisticated, gourmand, thin girl,

Erotomaniac with Vestal soul,

How it comes out: “I wait for you at seven…””


 

Poem of Feeling of Spring

 

You are ready from gloom to suicide,

Hang yourself, or shoot in the mouth.

Wait a while - and the spring will come to your side

After just three more snowy months.

 

Nightingales of the cherry will whistle,

Full of nightingales cherry will stand.

May go past you the shot from the pistol

And the rope fall apart in your hands.

 

With the fishing rods made of redwood

People will catch the fish on the hook,

And the swan with white breast and white feathers

Will swim lightly upon the lake.

 

Mounds will breathe with dampness and drown,

Will send redolence and be green,

And your neck, as it gives a way down,

Will become pouring with rain.

 

And the bushes under flooding river

Into lilac and cherry will bloom.

Noisy, singing, the spring will deliver

All your girlfriends and also - you.

 

And will love, and will bloom, and will spring again

All that dimmed in the winter from gloom.

All the dry will be cut by axe-wielding hand

And the juicy will bravely bloom.

 

Do not kill yourself, do not hang your head,

Rather let your fantasy play.

We will live through these months however we can,

And soon afterwards - it is May!


 

On The Contrary

 

Imagine yourself again

Such, as you had been always,

And in days, when damask steels shine,

Seek the floral paths,

 

Imagine yourself again

As an aesthete and not a rude broad,

Life, having swamp toad become,

In dreams, like a fairy, the dove.

 

All world – ahead, and you – round:

To prosaic nonsense do not yield …

Imagine yourself again

With final flower of poetry!..


 

Purple Bloom

 

Strive to catch Aeolus,

Child, in net of flowers.

I’m intoxicated by mathiol,

Chirps the river.

 

And in smell the nails

Of lilac, limply driving in,

Shines in the guest house

Her – violet cliff.

 

In July blossoming

The bushes tilting,

The blooming singing,

The lilac with wings!


 

The Autumn Palette

 

Sad and naked is view of the field.

Sad and dismal is view of the wood.

On one roof – the pigeon white

And another – on other roof.

 

And sea – and thus somehow nude

At nude mountains are melancholy.

And the air, and the dampness, and the land –

All sorrow melts in despondency.


 

Ephemerides

 

He lay, all in gypsum,

He did lie bandaged,

And in his hand Ibsen

Indignantly trembled…

 

Where is the personhood proud?

Where is the ego of his?

The man’s excellence

From all else?

 

Is it not frail?

Is all dust?

And him gradually

Fright started to embrace.

 

Before window the skier

His circle of ephemerides…

And the great Norwegian

Fell on floor from the hands.


 

Rondel XVI

 

I love the lemon with the purple:

I love lilac buttercups among,

With violet I languish lemon.

With the spring word I sing the moon:

Purple, new, radiant!

Moon – just like a ship…

I love the purple and the lemon:

I love lilac midst buttercups.

For me to thus be in love

With night, with morning, evening, day,

And in half-shade, and in half-light

To be admiring life always,

The purple and the lemon to love…


 

Nona

 

O, lace silver-blue

Of sleeping snow street – alley!

How to ask words for you,

That in them express you more dearly?

 

In December liturgy, barely alive,

Nature sleeps. Sleep – than lily more white.

Husbandless winter, you – like widow.

I walk in azure silver-blue,

Finding in all symptoms of dormancy.


 

Drawing

 

In seaside park there is pine above the river,

Looking in its shape like a lyre.

And in the orange sunset of October

A girl every evening goes there.

From forehead on the chest descend two braids,

The happy-blue eyes go mad,

The freckles joyfully flutter on the face,

And the thin lips and the long arrogance…

In her, I know, the village is in love

(I think under “village” man’s all).

To her it’s flattering to feel love from all sides,

But for the searches all intangible.

She is girlishly-rude and coquettish,

Such is for nature dear,

She is sensitive and sensual, but passion

Yields to her, and to impulse – not her…


 

Poem For Gourmet

 

Gourmets, Rabon, Ballet, Berrin,

Ivanov, Kochukov and Kaestner

In darkness of Petersburg had shined –

The apical more gloriously lighted.

 

The dream cake and the dessert bread

As if from the fresh strawberry –

Is not Ivanov of this proud,

The truly great confectioner?...

 

And drunkenness from Berrin?

The sugared chestnuts?

At first – tout, and now – rien:

That tore at left all the Satans!

 

Bonbons de viollettes Gourmets,

The brownie of the torn chestnuts –

To eat upon the stern of yacht

Or on beaumonde resorts.

 

Whose revolt, dreams the Grace

Chased in Koslovodsk dryness:

“O, y Gourmets was boule de neige”

Like the mint-sugar dumpling…

 

From Nelly and Kestner not once

To buy “records from raspberry”

We drove: to forget us?

Like trill of Filin, you had melted!

 

And you are gloried, Kuchkurov,

“Mocca”! To make the cakes

Ah, it was not without feasts

From the East to the West…

 

And Gessel? Rick? Rabon? Ballet?

Oh, what the rolls and what the puffs!

All this had been alive on earth,

And now they all – berths!


 

Fast And Feast

 

Your eyes, your azure eyes,

Your azure eyes,

In me uplift the stormy feelings,

Azure dragonflies.

 

Oh, I hear, I hear

Your eloquent silence …

And your body – is beautiful

Tropical scales…

 

And your elastic lips,

Resilient lips of yours…

I look in disarray and fear

On them, crushing their eyes…

 

Thus this team whole, thus all,

Snake, vampire and dragonfly.

Scarlet, azure, gold,

All – fast in the feast Bacchal…


 

Caviar And Vodka

 

Earlier with the pressing caviar we spread the rolls,

With the fat butter layer caviar clung to it.

Without caviar did not manage the picnic or the walks.

We sang about the sturgeon – for sturgeon’s girlfriend.

 

Nikolayev’s squirrel, the kingly redhead,

Our known treasury – what with it will compare,

With Russian bread monopoly? Will agilely pour in throat…

In it caviar was dessert better than all and tastier!

 

And in the silver paper, March, from Rostov,

With the lacquer roulette charming our eyes?!

As it can be forgotten, what dreaming is ready,

To her, whose tongue you caressed, to her, that clung, like atlas!

 

How did not get cold, how it was you don’t get tired,

How was you will not wake up – into cafeteria you’ll go:

On crystal jug of vodka, on caviar in porcelain you’ll stare, -

You’ll cheer up, you will rest, you’ll get warm!


 

Poem Of Honourable Lady

 

How walks upon the street in dress

In yellow plush, conversing with a laundress

About the former fight in the market?

Honourable lady, lady with dog.

 

Who thus had gossiped skilfully

About local pharmacy, with sleep caught,

About the poetess, bravely laughing?

Honourable lady, lady with dog.

 

Who in the bedroom, opening the oracle,

Goes, with whom husband betrays; with the Pole

Go with the Jewess, that sinful one on pole?

Honourable lady, lady with dog.

 

Who this whole day fills

With shouting, cards, chewing gum and snoring?

Who walks with the white neck?

Honourable lady, lady with dog.


 

Poem to Refugees

In these miniature Russian colonies

Those who are hiding from lawlessness

Their sinful bodies and souls,

Interests are so pitiful

Feelings vicious and hypocritical:

They seek only food and warmth.

 

They all eat - it is only appropriate,

And the warmth in our time is important too,

Nobody will argue with that.

But apart from the warmth and the victuals

There are needs mental and spiritual,

Besides breakfast and wood and coat.

 

There is theater, symphony and poems,

There are paintings, and if in Estonia

There is no such delight,

My compatriots, Russian terribly,

It's your fault that you see things narrowly,

And you lose your hearing and sight.

 

If you'll find nothing like this within this land

And this village except the wheat bread,

Maybe at nights we will perform

Shows of music and poems, and vocalists

We will give majestic performances

And perhaps we will dance until dawn.

 

Maybe we'll declaim aloud Gogol's thought

(Fess up: you did not read a lot

Of his work in your life, dear friends).

Maybe take something from Nekrasov

And to know travels of Hatteras, if

Nietzsche, for one, the powers forbid.

 

But what are such pursuits to you

Calling nothing but curses out of you

Better revelry, maps and food!

Better gossip, intrigue and constant complaints

That for long the army should have advanced

For your sake to retake Petrograd.


 

Thu And Ani

 

Oh, Thu my dear!

Oh, Ani my dear!

Thu looks like a pear,

Ani – squirrel in a trap he’s for…

 

Tiiu is taller a bit,

Ani – lilac-chestnut;

On the roof in the nights of the moon

Dreams, like chilly foam.

 

Ani, linen blonde,

Crowning with lilies of the valley

Hair, like spiderweb

I can think – quiet girl…

 

Girls are both arrogant,

Girls are both excessive,

Both, like May, inspired!

Both, like August, beauteous!

 

Legs in you, like in hind…

What, striving to cliff…

Give me the right hand, Ani,

The left only Tiiu will give.


 

Brilliant Poem

I do not want to live my life, like all,

Living like squirrels in a hamster wheel,

Walking around in circles, being slaves,

Afraid of storm and of the ocean waves.

 

I want to live uplifted like an eagle;

I want to live conceited like a Creole;

Smashing, threatening barriers, sliding by

Between the two "forbidden"'s intertwined.

 

I want to live, a wise and brilliant man

Of all his peers a century ahead

And yet in other measures, to exist

A fifty years behind my time at least.

 

I want to live, as it behooves to live

To him who knows to conjure and conceive

New notes from ancient ones and from the past -

I want to live the way life lives, at last!


 

Cultivated Lilac Blooming

In violet and purple bloomed the lilac,

The lilac bloomed in pink and white and pale.

We headed toward it on a tortuous trail

Across an ancient fir and furrowed park.

 

Sea to the left; river ahead, and hills -

Behind; the blooming lilacs on the mounts

Weave from the gentle smell delightful clouds

And breathe the timeless redolence that heals.

 

The lilac bloomed, and to my love I told:

"If only I could take pen in my hand!"

And she responded sharply in her stead:

"The lilac blooms - large, and like ruby and like gold."

 

The night is fickle, nervous, luminous.

The kisses, nibbles until lips turned blue.

There's so much taste and elegance in you

The lilac bloomed - the bodies bloomed in us.

 


 

To Felissa Kruut

My dear Felissochka! My most exquisite!

I give you "Minstrel" and all my dreams.

You are beloved by all that's delicate,

My sweet Felissa - My violin!

 

May to the crude one you be an egotist -

I care not: You are most loved by me!

My most talented! My sweet Felissochka!

My one sought after! My destiny!

 

The hate of sin here is love of marriage:

You like it when I say "bride" to you.

Symbol of Hestia! Little Hestochka!

In you again I will find my youth!


 

Poem to Death

In name of the Lord I forbid you to come

Into the house where Lord willed for life to bloom

In name of God I forbid you, death!

 

Is there not enough for you in the world

In cannon's maw and in the steel of the sword?

In name of God I forbid you, death!

 

Go, go far away, whore! Do not stand at the door!

Do not warm poet's home with your icy breath!

In name of God I forbid you, death!


 

Poem Of Loyal Fishing

 

We go to catch the trouts on the porches,

In forests after Aluoja, to May Rant.

Sarcastic but strict are your eyes.

You are all beauteous. Pearly-bare are your feet.

And among two braids – the big green band.

 

And I with spacious black blouse

In patterned cap, in Russian boots.

Is it not true, Tiiu, if sharp are the eyes,

Today we’re here, tomorrow in New York.

And certain anxiety in the legs?

 

Stopped at the crooked linden

And momentarily to sprawl the fishing rod:

All types meet the trout here,

From dehydrated come the sobs,

And sometime here the salmon walks..

 

And silver, and the gold, and the bronze!

Wide and thin!.. Thus,

Let’s catch delightfully-seriously,

On equal: shoulder in shoulder and differently,

Like darkness at home would not chase us.

 

Coming home, we will turn fish into rings,

And we’ll boil, and we’ll into soup them turn.

And, on a Russian stove, after dinner

We will remember about our river

And bask upon the rabbit fur…


 

To One Different from Others

You're in no way like other women at all:

You have laughter controlled and expressive,

You wear dresses measured and fashionably long

And you slip out from my embraces.

 

You do not cut your hair to look upscale,

Deepen brows or wear make up,

You have Smirnoff, but also a nightingale

Who in nature becomes his replacement,

 

You are able to see in the sugar the salt,

And in just uttered word, a full sentence.

In Akhmatova you value pain without halt

And in Gumilev - charm and cadence.

 

For you, connoisseur of all kinds of verse,

Sharpness of Sologubov means something,

And that you and Blok never did kiss

You are grieving sixth summer and counting.

 

And in your eyes, as they are now getting well -

Ocean breeze and a rye field in season.

You're in no way like other women at all,

And you've become my wife for that reason.


 

Easter In Petersburg

 

It smelled in canteen of hyacinths,

Of easter cake, Madeira and ham,

It smelled of Christ Easter of the spring,

Of the orthodox Russian faith.

 

It smelled of sun, the paint of window

And, from the lemon body of woman,

Of the inspired-happy Easter

That around with bell ring did hum.

 

And at the monument of Nicholas

The very Big Sea before

There was the pavement of the ends,

It smelled of the tarred boards.

 

From the washed out from Holiday glass,

From without sand and without cotton wool frames,

The city stomped, rang and clattered,

Kissing, with delight embraced.

 

For stomach and soul sweet it had been,

Having pinned flowers chased the youth.

And though it was dry, at the elders,

Fur coats, cotton in ears and boots…

 

Poetry of religion, where art thou?

Where’s religiosity of poesy?

Where the idle songs are sung,

“The business” now is serious…

 

So absurdly, funnily, stupidly

In city had been my young ones,

But my heart had been embarrassedly…

That, which is peculiar only to only Russia!


 

Praise to the Fields

My fields, my wave-like, foaming fields!

With autumn spinach, brown as if of bricks,

And lettuce, clover, heather and daisy.

How much the eyes can hear and ears can see!

 

I walk along the side of the river.

The wildflowers shine like sapphire

Leaning beneath the wheat's golden frame,

I hear, as in the river splashes elm,

 

This splash like music gives its gentle sound.

And the blue storm of sea? A burst of sun?

And clouds within the sky, all white like sheep?

The life with its simplicity is deep.

 

While I am able still to touch your breath,

May it become and stay forever blessed!

And may the ground become the earth in bliss -

The fields, the fields, the life-begetting fields!


 

Fairy Eiole

 

Who moves in a moon shine across the fields

With eternal movement of the planets?

Ruler of Hestia, fairy Eiole.

In Russian ei ole is: no.

 

In ban is pain. There’s no pain in liberty.

For this pain is in her always.

Pain is intoxicating. Fairy Eiole

The contrast of approval: Yes.

 

She is in her autumn halo,

In own negation of all things

Drags inconceivably. Of fairy Eiole,

Taking all, that you will not give…

 

And in it delight. And in pain dust of liberty.

And even hope – vanity.

And with full image fairy Eiole

Affirms: “Beauty is only in me.”


 

Poem “Villa Mon Repos”

 

Meat has eaten meat, meat has eaten asparagus,

Meat has eaten fish and the wine poured.

And having paid off meat, in half-meat carriage

Suddenly in hat with big feather to meat it had rolled.

 

Meat caressed meat, and was by meat espoused,

And created meat on the copybook of the land.

Meat was ill, rotted and turned into mass

Of stinking decomposition, appropriate to meat.


 

I Dream…

 

I dream of what, of which there’s not

And which I do not know, may be…

I dream, like the real poet, -

Yes, like a real poet, I dream.

 

I dream, that in the glow of years

The earthly hell will be more like heaven.

I dream, a universal poet –

I dream like universal poem.

 

I dream, that Heaven from the woes

Will give to Russian land reprieve.

For that, I am – a Russian poet,

For this in Russian do I dream!


 

Mary

                               … Foggy woe has lit up

                               With Mary’s silver rhyme…

                                            V. Bryusov

 

Silver name of Mary

Under mountain with ocarina sounds…
 Silver name of Mary

Like swarm of flying pearls…

 

Silver name of Mary

Speaks of Christ, of the cross…

Silver name of Mary

Of the good beauty speaks…

 

Silver name of Mary

Shines to me with immortal star…

Silver name of Mary

With grizzle makes my temple silver…


 

Design On Canvas

 

On the sheer shore of sea of little Hestia,

Along rowan, piled up with bitter coral,

Where singing girls married the sight tenderly,

More virtuous than birch’s bark is the soul,

 

On alley, thrown on under black blackcurrant,

Tasted the foothills to water itself,

We walk other path, that not for us has been trodden,

And we seek all the hanging gardens of lace…

 

And we build airy impossible palaces,

And after the blue birds we tirelessly run,

Between them the same ones – the same swallows,

That in last times had tossed, swifts and foam.

 

No, you don’t look like a blue bird, swallow,

Doesn’t look to earthly palazzo hut.

A brush of rowan for me, beloved Hestia,

You, that impishly and jokingly swayed the wind…


 

Will I Forget You?

 

Oh you, evenings of poetry,

Upon the stage that shines,

And on the meadow of bonfire,

Not money, but for art –

Appreciative, will I forget?

The happy hour is blessed,

When, turning and hiding fishing line,

Upon our soup we’ll dine,

We will return to our homes,

Through forest, where birches sleep,

Nightingales to sing, like psalms,

To sing, like can only we.

Reverently, inspiredly,

Following every trace.

Oh, life, simple like a flower,

Will you be blessed!


 

Bas-Relief

 

There is in Yurievo, in Yakovlevsky, mountain,

Which, when I stand beneath

And I will stare above, for this not very vigilantly,

Lightly reminds me Tiflis.

 

And now I see: the bath’s marble,

The fast, screw, restaurant’s person and abuse

And the old duchess Orbeljani

Sitting upon the sun at the bath…


 

Smoke Of Ice

 

In wind smokes the stream’s ice,

On the fields the smoke carries.

The powdered maiden

To her skates gives the race.

 

She carries on the wriggles

Of the smoking crystal,

Crouching before the white manes,

Resurrected in the light dance.

 

On the white white is white –

All swirl, all air, all flight.

And ice still glows, glows, glows –

As if will flare up this ice!


 

Her Pets

 

She fed the winter birds,

Crumbs from the window throwing.

From the spring roll call

She laughed joyfully.

 

When she to the school had run,

Pets, hearing the snow’s crush,

With noisy and happy horde

They bore with her from bush to bush!


 

Mariinsky Theatre

 

Temple with velvet blue upholstery,

Cozy, smelling of melodies,

Where soft is snow – not sharp and not obscure –

I wanted to restore before me.

 

Let century pass, like Ljydoboj,

The minute’s lust and whimsy,

Let him with malicious net divide

Me, Mariinsky Theatre, from thee –

 

Let! Still, athwart the fate, is he,

Can’t tear the memory of thee,

Giving to me his own charm.

 

And, azure temple, I give thee

Art, having crossed to centuries,

To mercy the Lord’s Theatre’s name!


 

Before The War

 

To Gumilev I paid a visit,

When he lived with Akhmatova in the Tsar’s,

In the lordly house, big chilly and quiet,

Snoring with his patriarchal life.

 

Poet did not know, that threatened death

Somewhere in Madagascar wood,

Not in the choking Sahara sand,

And in Petersburg, where he was killed.

 

And long, conquistador of soul,

Told me, of what the joy had told.

At the table stood Akhmatova,

 

With constant sadness tormented,

With unseen veil draped

Of the rotting Village of the Tsar.


 

Brunette In Pink

 

In alleys of larch trees I walk past the lake.

Transparent is water at the feet.

To meet me shimmers the girl in pink,

Of whom the poet sorrowfully could not think…


 Alley is dark and with the gloom heavy,

And gloom is joyless, and gloom is empty.

And you shine! And you are happy!

And so intoxicated are thee!

 

Come up groupers unhurried

And in the water stand motionless,

As if they think of the curl blond,

Melting the dream of the pink dress…


 

Silver Sonata

 

I stand near a window in compline of silver

And look from it upon the used fields,

Where straw from removed rye bristled feathers

And the empty land pricked up with the chills.

 

Nothing! – not from us, leaves of white apple trees of childhood,

Not from you, refined feelings’ lace gondolas…

I wasted my gift – inheritance given to me by God, -

Impoverished, quiet and empty with plundered soul…

 

And evening – without words, hopes, wishes, dreams,

Mechanically looking, as the moon walks out from the sea

And my friend wanders on October frozen meadow,

In vain struggling to help me in angst – I stand by window.


 

Poems To Moscow

 

Watered my gaze the dreams:

Again – there, after Kremlin towers, -

To Russia inimitable

The unchanging earth.

 

To her wealthy is the sordid,

Full of meaning are the trifles:

Old duchess from Arbat

Reads Fet through the glasses…

 

And here in the cozy church

In a dandy’s coupe I drove up,

Courtesan apportions the circles,

Her own in the angstful crowd …

 

And you, walk in evening

On a troika Moskva past …

On the granite lane

The genial mansions.

 

And there, in which of them, where the flock

Of dreams slows the flight,

The hostess with the sun of Moscow

Melts the “Nieva ice”…

 

Dreams! You – barefoot wanderers,

Coming across the fields, -

To the invincible Russia

The unchangeable land!


 

Words Of The Sun

 

I saw many countries and not worse than her –

All land is loved by me tenderly.

But to compare to Russia? My heart with her,

Or is she incomparable for me?

 

How cosmic is the soul, that bad patriot:

Identical for me is the whole world…

I know, in what I’m strong and in what my people are weak,

I know the meaning of meaningless laws…

 

Judging the war, judging the pogrom,

Above each people’s violence,

I love Russia – my parents’ home –

Even with all the dirt and all the dust…

 

Unthinkable to me is thought, that darkness – over the dead…

I do trust, I do believe in Sunday.

With all strength of the soul, with flight of thought,

With fire of the inspiration of mine!

 

Know, trust: today’s holiday it’s near,

And not so over the mountains –

Will be announced space on villages dear

With the Russian Orthodox bells!

 

And will repent the dark, but the wise nation

In its sins before the Lord.

Stop first, that into church will enter,

Undecidedly before the shore…

 

And in delight waving like spear in air the ray,

All-good words, of gold,

Sun says from skies: “In own Monday

Russia forgives the guilty all!”


 

Sunday

 

On the east, where, to Ural mountains,

Scattered the strange country,

That not once, it seemed, had been dying

Like love, like sun, like spring…

 

And when the people severely went quiet

And, orphaned, from tears went blind,

With the God’s will again reincarnated…

Like spring, like sun, like Christ!


 

Who Are You?

 

Hey you, the mess’s kingdom!

You, complete carousel!

With the ill will of the hooligan

You drink blood like kissel!

 

The whole world at you marvels.

All cannot guess:

You – are the walking girl

Or are you divine blessedness?


 

It Will Be Soon…

 

And soon the spring day will be,

And to Russia go home we will…

Put on the hat of silk:

In it you’re especially beautiful….

 

And will be holiday… big, big,

Of whom there had not been, pity,

From those times, where earth was made,

So laughable and so moldy…

 

And you will whisper: “We not in dream?..”

Will laughter pinch you I shall

And weeping, praying to the spring

I kiss the Russian land!


 

Classical Roses

 

Once, when the dreams would bloom - the times were those -

In people's hearts, transparent and aflame,

How fresh, how beautiful have been the roses

Of my love, of my spring, and of my fame!

 

The years have passed, many a tear flows -

The country and its people all are lost.

How fresh, how beautiful are now the roses

Of memories of my delightful past!

 

But days go by, and thunder's in repose.

Russia is seeking pathways to go home.

How fresh, how beautiful will be the roses

That my country will throw upon my tomb!


 

On Earth In Beauty

 

I live in beauty for years eight

On the majestic height.

The blue bay is seen from the window.

In it – the moon’s gold overflow.

 

And – with the wave of villages as it blooms

Lilac in May pours us,

And then all dachas and all homes -

Entirely the lilac mess!

 

For that sweet are the dreams –

Are not the lilac flowers these?

For that the soul is not in ecstasy,

With lilac breathing constantly…

 

And in the winter – half a year – the snow,

Skies, sleigh, snowstorm, felt boots.

Heated hot is the Russian stove.

The precise speech of classic books.

 

Here are no torments, going insane:

With me is nature itself.

And ones that could to her come near

Become deeper and more clear.

 

No, it doesn’t draw me to the towns,

Where reigns the “golden horde.”

Madness of soul, soulless mind

I see from the backwoods of God.

 

With all in village I’m familiar:

With the fisherman, with the shoemaker.

And who is pulled by the joints,

Thus go fishermen to the poet.

 

It’s boring for man to live without newspapers …

They will let me smoke cigarettes.

For me there is none.

If there is – I will give mine.

 

Without horse, and the wheel without

We go to the lake in the woods

To catch fish, in bag taking bread

Returning into the darkness blue.

 

And with me she is constant,

Who for me, like nature, is tender,

That the only true thought

The blue noise to noise squabble did prefer.

And with nature I live and breathe,

I write inspiredly and simply.

Dissolving with the soul in the space,

I live on the earth in beauty!


 

Ray Of Sun

 

Into your dreamer jumped the sun

With the energy of fire,

And the cat chased, warming up,

Stripes of the coat of fur.

 

And splashed the ray in crystals

Of the Fraje’s flower vase,

On the coach rollers with a smile

Noticing the tomes of Bourges…

 

The ray will attempt to smell

Camelia, in futile fervour mettled.

Looking at the handiwork,

It will not show to you a fault.

 

Thereafter (the whole young sun, understand

Is empty, a hoop like!)

Barely he will want to give the gold

To curacao that was not imbibed…

 

Oh, the March sun curiously

In it is joke and previous hemp!

Look, it sucks gratefully

The unwrapped caramel…

 

And all aspires in the girl’s heart

Unceremoniously to see:

The line of Mitzkevich into rhyme’s chest,

Into the chest the line of Myusse?

 

And having been naughty in sleep,

Looking coquettishly in mirror,

Will hide the little envelope,

In which you will send the letter…


 

Dried Up Vial

 

The empty vials among,

Under the dust of closet decay,

I found the vial of Atkinson,

Sometime against Vervain…

 

Whose tender white neck

Was with the lemons fragrant?

Blowing with marine, whose hand

With batiste handkerchief had been waving?

 

Perfume, my perfume luminous,

Dried out along the wretched road!

Torturously dry are the vials,

And fill the heart – slighted by God…

 

But memory! She in the sun

Intoxicatingly with near jet

Of beloved perfume of Mopassan,

Perfume of English Henriette…


 

Reconciling Water

 

Self from the self – in foreign poseur’s days

In hop loving soulful delights

I go once a month to the lake

There, there – after thirty grounds.

 

The swamp is impassable almost.

Rotted dike. And suddenly – mountain wood.

Where pines – masts of the future fleet –

Are dressed in changeless cover for the head.

 

And ahead, to the right, to left, behind,

Wherever you will look, or step wherever,

Three grasses’ dishevelled braids

And all water, water, water, water…

 

How I love you, dry always,

And tender, and capacious, like dream…

I bless the crystal strings:

I am exalted, immersed in them.

 

I love to sit beside the lake for hours,

The bewitching float following,

Over the woods thrown over into depth

And over the tumbling wind…

 

And rudd is shining like the sun,

Caught upon the hook’s edge.

Silver is the trembling mountain

Upon the shabby canoe bottom, roaches.

 

Under the squelching of the playing bream,

Still splashes, biting at the roots of grass,

Piously quiet are my dreams,

Withdrawn from the city frames…

 

And thus for me both sorrow and shame

To the needless the needing needs

Not to go to rest upon the lake

Water reconciling to make peace?


 

In The Snow

 

Deep snow lies in the mountain.

River in valley stopped running.

All white, with snow the villa merged.

And we walk into the snow alone.

On lips the slow: “Ceased to love…”

“Always will love!” – hasty in the eyes.

 

Well, always… I know melted is the snow,

To ringing of timpani the river breaks the ice.

And in it will reflect the clouds anew,

And pearl of trills will shimmer in the groves.

Well – always! The heart knows of this!

Now snow lies here – centuries!


 

In Hamlet By The Sea

 

In hamlet by the sea, where fox trot they don’t dance,

Where they don’t with broom chase politics from their homes,

Where they don’t kiss frequently, but because they then kiss,

In the kisses there are all with the virgin soul;

 

In the hamlet by the sea, where there is a little hut

Where they accommodate feelings, where – akin to one of beauty –

Where they come into the town with contempt and secret dread

On the urgent affairs, these days you are cursing:

 

In the hamlet by the sea, where for subscription for magazine

The literate fishermen will give savings

And which wrathfully chased the whole tavern,

Because with nature do not neighbour the taverns;

 

In the hamlet by the sea, drowning with the spring

In unforgettable lilac, incomparable aromas,

Thus in the hamlet, on the sheer cliff,

I live, glad at the sea, proud of my choices!


 

Piama

 

There is a strange woman’s name – Piama,

In which there’s sting, in which there’s gaping,

And let this girl, let this great dame, -

Meeting with Piama – I would have trembled…

 

To me would have been painted gloomy hole,

Where in quicksand algae with leeches fussing,

Before the name of awful-wide Piama,

Presently, pushing away and teasing…

 

How to him is tied the drama

And what itself to itself does it mark?

But with my bottomless name – Piama –

Associated is the deadly for my heart.

 

In all nativity and in the temple nothing,

In it is light, into full darkness shining,

With you in the past, Piama, we are tied,

But where and when – I do not comprehend…


 

No More Than Dream

 

Yesterday I dreamt an amazing dream:

I rode with a maiden, reading poems of Blok.

The horse went quietly. Rustled the wheel.

And tears dropped. And curled the blonde lock.

 

And more than nothing contained my dreams…

But, shaken with them, deeply worrying,

And all day I think, trembling anxiously,

Of ancient maiden, of Blok not forgetting…


 

Ten Years

 

Ten years – sorrowful years! – I’m thrown in seaside wilderness.

Corpse after corpse of ones dear. And I am myself half a corpse.

Ten years – awful years! – of stifling indifference

White, red – and pink – of Russia’s society groups.

 

Ten years! – heavy years! – of de-winging privation,

Of humiliation, and aching brain-crushing need.

Ten years – frightful years! – of satire lines

Of human inhumanity and eternal hostility.

 

Ten years – strange years! – repentance from many habits,

On the current sight – wise-sober – needless-evil…

But for the fishes, lakes, groves and the birds,

And meeting at the sea with incomparable spring!

 

But for so many years, innocent years, like white apple tree,

Unearthly flowers, growing on the land,

And poems from the soul, like nature, of brave and free,

And forgiveness in the eyes, as in tears, and – love on front!

 


 

Dream About Village

 

The grazing coquette,

On the horse prancing.

Bugle egret –

On beach mediterranee.

 

Dancer the lady meeting,

Count slightly graying,

Athlete, flirt and fencer,

Making the beau-monde insane…

 

She, in the necklace of ermine,

Walks into the tickling flirt,

And a white flock of the seagulls

With contempt pours over resort.

 

The rapier king calls her

Five cups with the mandarins,

And special engraving laughter

Is choked softly with necklace…


 

My Fishing Rod

 

This fishing rod of Munich construction,

Loyal companion of the life of mine,

Skilfully detracts me from ugliness

Of historical – and hysterical! – time.

 

This thin rod, like a reed,

Unfamiliar, subtle, like a dream,

Precisely girl – certainly blonde –

Delightful places opened for me.

 

Tenderly taking into hands and caressing softly,

Like with beloved, in the woods I walk with her,

Where we won’t meet scum of the people,

Where the skies in the lakes shimmer.

 

I walk with her long – morning to sunset –

On trails, that weaved difficult look.

We meet just the forester’s hut,

But we will meet with many lakes!

 

And in, familiar in trifles, each of them

We like to orchestrate quiet halt.

Each bush serves us with ravishing home,

That bliss to bottomless you to me did gift.

 

Bending over water and self admiring

Reflecting in azure mirrors the skies,

Long looks into the blue my girlfriend,

Curiosity awakening in tiger perches.

 

And beckoning them with woeful-fragile bend,

Attracts the hook by worms hidden,

To credulous fish with woman’s cunning

Given is wily – what to do: deadly – lesson.

 

Catching the perch, straightens

And, triumph’s light whistle, the mill bending,

Publishing, discards, very happy,

My loot, the face barely splashing.

 

Thus my girlfriend sustenance gives to me,

Lures to nature, gives the dreams.

For this lovable to me is her wandering –

With the wooden attendant Beauty!


 

Narva

 

On the fast Narva, a stately river,

Where seems huge from stone the sheer shore,

Boulevard on the perch and garden, named Dark,

Where water is wide and houses are far…

 

Narva aspires among two ancient castles -

Peter’s and Swede – uplifting the gray towers.

Ivan-city quiet on the river, like yesterday’s master,

And now, like guest, why he doesn’t want to leave from guests.

 

I love the evenings on streets thin and loud,

When flashlights throw the spots radiant,

When by me old Narva’s soul is especially understood,

And it is probable to meet Peter’s shade…

 

But instead of her I meet laughter of maidens,

Beautiful faces, nicer than ghosts…

I love among the young human plants,

In hothouse wrapped up in smarmy fur of north.

 

And long I, long I walk ahead, then behind.

Admiring reachable beauty, thus strict and proud,

I dream above the darkness of penetrating Narva.

Entering the named Dark public garden.


 

Appearance Of A Poet

 

Because appeared the wound of autumn

In the fallen leaf’s veins,

The girls felt themselves strangely

As if ready to become moms.

 

Because she thought from Fet

And with the intangible dragged,

The girl felt herself the poet

From roots of hair to fingers’ end.


 

Let Whole Evening Play…

 

Play me from “the Queen of Spades,”

Barely from the sickest of operas,

So touching in herself

With rationally-stale Europe…

 

At first play the entrance for me,

In its kind the one and only,

Where only to the crime

Man is driven by the dream…

 

Dream! You’re rejected by the world…

In ridicule is your sister – passion…

Where the heart, swollen with fat,

Madness of wishes can’t be found…

 

O, all, you know, that you recall,

Play to me, this evening play to me:

In northern May and by the sea

Tchaikovsky is especially cordial…


 

By Sea And Lakes

 

By sea and lakes, in my woods of pine,

I live lightly, alertly, joyfully,

Not to know politics, new dances not to see

And drink steamed milk instead of wine.

 

Especially is dear to me the village air

Under the autumn of winter late and long,

When I, like Lensky, become a dreamer,

When the people in dacha have gone home.

 

With citizens’ departure from the village of ours

They leave until the spring (how it is nice!)

All that is stilted and “on four paws,”

For this from the town I depart…

 

Only, of what I am sad sometimes:

No sound of music and not a soul once,

Who could hear the old measure of the poem

Or new – all equally, who sorrowed of the verse.

 

There are no such ones here, and without them it’s empty:

Who fished all day long, who had plowed the fields…

How sorrowful without soul, the art seeking,

In love with music of the most refined verse!

 

Availability lies in my foundation,

But all the more akin with pride every day:

By the sea and lake in my forests of pine

I am glad with Muse, but we’re one in the joy.


 

They All Speak About The Same Thing

Nightingales of monastery garden,

Like all nightingales flying above,

Say that there is but one joy in living,

And that this joy comes in form of love.

 

And the monastery meadow's flowers

With the tenderness just flowers possess,

Say there's but one merit: Lovers

Touch their lips together and caress.

 

And, filled to the brim with blueness endless,

Lakes among the monastery wood,

Say: There's no more azure glance

Than in those who love and who are loved.


 

It’s A Shame To Believe…

 

From the sloping mountain we rush in skids to the river,

And to the girls lovely, and to the girls funny.

In beautiful eyes from the cold bliss and fear,

Commonly… in fact, not all equally for me!

 

To meet the oaks – we carry with the oak alley –

Hurry in mountains and shimmer headlong past.

Here’s river. And girls’ laughter crimson-pearly

From under the twirls, wily – gray from the frost.

 

I have trouble believing, in frost participants fools,

That these healthy children – the dream is light? –

Under upset old Mulbach will walk with the fellows.

To dance the night with Charleston’s hobbled dead!


 

Magnificent Woman

 

All here count her happy: lover is laborer,

Husband “climbs out of skin” – enviable fortune for dames!

All call her beautiful here:

And the meaning – housemaid for demons, nurse for the forms.

 

She for a smart girl passes lightly and freely:

Her thrift, is reason for intellect?

And if the mind to surrender for fashionable to ones meeting,

In other, invoking envy, the spring’s suit.

 

Her attitude to art costs one thing!

She even knows that wonderful poet Pushkin was!

Will it be sorrowful – calms my soul with “parting”

And loves to watch the “homeland” of the lived years…

 

You and I, reader, meet every day,

Though we are living in different lands,

Magnificent woman, as speaks common man,

The one and the same, who is narrated in these poems…


 

Green Charm

 

Blossomed the green and gold,

Leaves are drunken with juice of sun.

The wry flock of spring dreams fluttered,

And young decrepit words again.

 

Again – inexplicably and inconceivably –

Hopefully, experience across –

The whole unloved flock lovingly-tenderly

The charm’s unsure glance.

 

And vainly in the park you yesterday had twittered

Of the unspent love long:

Wherefore is the spring, like all, that was tired,

Sounded, like the quiet lips of yours…


 

Holidays

 

More vulgar than holidays it’s hard to conjure,

And their appearance I cannot bear:

Disgustingly it’s crowded everywhere,

That in marvellous holidays is hidden terror.

 

Here fancier pauperization

Looks through the pink glasses,

In the baths the steamed tradesmen

Are dressing in clean collars.

 

How laugh the townswomen,

Bewitched with the mug of the lie, -

The meaningless kept women

Husbands, like their own, like alien…

 

Stupidity’s three daughters – Envy, Talentlessness

And Gossip – hang around, boasting, in crowd,

Where luxuriantly honored is mother of beauties,

Who in the holiday looks still more dumb.

 

Their lacquered cavaliers –

Rudeness, Startle and Perversion in lordly sight, -

Glad with themselves above all measure,

The bottles had lined up along the carpet.

 

With cinema and lemonade

Thus open into the body gates,

And Banality rejoices: “This is need”,

And Stupidity does its deeds…


 

To Contemporary Girl

 

You must, girl,

From nature take example:

Moon – while young still –

Wants to sleep early…

 

You must, girl,

From nature take example:

Spring – while spring still –

Will not fly…

 

And not wave – wave,

While – at sea will peer…

You must, girl

Take example from nature.


 

Orchid

 

To betray! Whom? An, not equal are all!

To the coming. To each. Clearly.

With whom? It’s not important. There’s one in the world

Betraying beautifully.

 

Surrendering to one, of another dreaming –

Untasted, untried,

Unfamiliar yesterday, who today with the sign

As tomorrow pretend the beloved…

 

To betray – and what didn’t become, so thusly,

If this betrayal only to recognize!

In it there’s nothing bad. It’s trifle simply.

Exactly I will put on the new dress.

 

And in this way to deceive the lovers,

Thus in them put to sleep the jealousy,

That they could not dare to look askance, -

I could laugh in the eyes directly!

 

Insolence, chill and lie – in it’s my essence.

On to the suffering returns my laugh.

I’m beautiful, slippery and sneaky, like a snake is,

And soullessly-dry, like an epoch.


 

Pines Of Her Childhood

 

When they accused you of stinginess,

In “to self in mind,” in full soullessness,

I thought, “Whom did not squander the lumps?

Anybody might carry nonsense.”

 

And when in piracy the husband-rogue

Axed down three pines two-hundred-year-old

In garden of her childhood and she didn’t oppose

I know, that true are rumors about her.


 

The Girl For Years…

 

For years the girl, callous already,

Is tough, prudent, practical and soulless.

And, decent to throw-up in indecency,

And all is weighed in her: and the words, and feelings.

Ah, such a head will not turn

For that all is poetic, alien is all…

Thus does not love anyone the woman,

But to love her, of course, is impossible:

All’s careful in her, wingless and negligible.

The crowd of lovers, and in her not one,

Of whom had thought anxiously and tenderly…

 

Ad this – woman, the earthliness divine!


 

The Crown Love

 

She, by no one replaced,

She, by no one surpassed,

She, beloved indiscriminately,

Thus in love illegibly,

 

She, the tidal freshness,

From far north sailor, she,

Like true miracle, miraculous,

Having chosen me, and did trust me.

 

And unnecessarily obliged

With one’s enthusiastic trust,

What with soul was not said,

Rejected and rejected.

 

And for this that to her crown

Is to me the burning love,

To her, who is surpassed by no one,

To her, who is changed by no one!


 

In That May

 

It was May. On the trimmed Arrow

Already the violets walked.

The children played in the burners,

And the ones horizontal basked.

 

And carriages’ tires crackled,

Disturbed the gravel pressed down.

It was May, and on the May bed

All was in Ostrov mount.

 

Whitish overnight the capital stayed

After Nevkas and after Nieva.

And faces were fanned

With in that May the lilac unloved…

 

With consumptive white swamp,

The white lilacs were fanned.

With Isabella breathed the lips –

With tart, perishable laziness…

 

There was fatality and death

In eyes, in Islands, in terror white,

And in every stone block

There was the tale of the last minute.

 

Faded were the burners

And unsteady were the horizontals

In this May on Arrow half-dead,

Where have died the violets…


 

Thrust To The South…

 

Is this not old age – I don’t understand, I don’t understand, -

Maybe tiredness – the soul’s gray spot.

Thus pulls me toward the faraway land,

Where there’s affectionate air and wave is more bright.

 

I want the blue and the warm,

Tropical fruits and large flowers,

And ringing songs, and ringing word,

And dreams without end, and feelings without horseshoes.

 

I love the North, I related with melancholy

To its pretty lakes and fields,

And something such happens in me,

But something my stare has seen.

 

That I get no rest, that I have no oblivion

In dear homeland, and I am pulled

By my awakened inspiration

To the foreign day of blue.


 

Your Road

 

Fresher than the fragrant pea,

And – fresher than freshness, it means,

A bit more than a little bit,

You wanted to become mine…

 

And to fresh lakes I’m being pulled

In forest indispensability,

We accompany with your look,

We accompany with your spring.

 

He wilted, demon of capital delights,

Having caused not to one pain…

I will put on the fresher dress!

The fresh air I will inhale!

 

I – am yours! Drive me!

Road, found by you to me,

Fresher than the fragrant pea:

Fresher than freshness can be!


 

Twofold Silence

 

The moon stands high.

The frosts stand high.

Screech the far-off convoys.

And it seems that we hear

Archangels’ silence.

 

It is heard – it is seen:

The whimper of cranberry quicksand,

In it the bushes of the snowy canvas

In it the whiteness of the quiet wings –

Archangels’ silence.


 

To Dear Girlfriends

 

For me in each terrain – where I have been,

There is a young friend,

Her, whom delighted heat of poetic dreams

And the poet’s verse of gold.

 

These women remember and love me,

They rarely write sisterly-softly,

And in vast year there is no paltry day,

That did not recall Bacchus the prophet.

 

I’m not tied to the one bodily –

The tender hands, we will kiss –

But still remains with me,

We disturb each with the strange nearness.

 

In forests I live with moon by the lake,

On mountains, on sands by the bay.

Sometimes, deciding to broaden the outlook,

Noisily through Europe I do fly.

 

And then, in each city – where I’ve been, there,

As in it, I sometime will be where, -

To meet me, for whom I have been dear,

And such – everywhere, everywhere!


 

Terror Of Deserts

 

Among them melts steadily

The host of former day’s knights,

Grows carelessly-wildly

The people’s new kind.

 

And those, who are thirty now,

Won’t understand the fathers’s hope:

At no time will conspire

With unrest that appeared in epoch.

 

An in the meeting with new young

Without shrines, without kindness,

Will fill the heart with trembling

And burning terror of the deserts…


 

My Acquaintance

 

You only had been at the rogue Z,

In sight of carnality still not extinguished…

You are from Houbigant! You’re all from Marquisette!

You’re all temptation! You’re all convulsion!

 

I sense in you fastidious judgment

And knowing, that than all to you is lie most dear,

I look at your voluptuous bruising

And catch the badly hidden shiver.

 

You quickly speak, by me not asked,

Aimlessly seeking another time to deceive,

And, being a disloyal wife,

You seek somehow the innocence to prove.

 

It’s strange and funny to me that you, another wife,

Forgotten, what in your tricks is nothing,

You’ll find needed to lie, ardently having gone white

In my eyes, and with shoulders to shudder…

 

And it is funnier, and it is annoying still more,

That you had long ago my peer not recognized

On all you. But not: with transparent thought rear

Selflessly you lie – and frequently out of place.

 

Stubbornly you speak about loyalty marital, -

And this, whose life – is the chronical case, -

And you dream, like on Thursday, in hour of day, armor all

Of shamelessness, to new lover you will pass!


 

It Could Have Been Thus…

 

It could have been thus: back twenty years,

There, on Nieva by Pushkin glorified,

Lightly was yellowing the green garden of Summer,

In autumn there had been blueness of the sky.

 

And stood in the ivy Marble palace,

Empty of Mars’s merry-making stood the field.

I in soft black hat and cloak

With one of these went along the roads…

 

And with a bonne with five year old girl

I met at Krylov then.

The child flashed along the way,

Like a star falling from the heaven.

 

It could have been thus… And here, You caressing,

I cannot rid myself of the thoughts:

It – one: your eyes’ shining

And – girls upon the Nieva’s shores!


 

Pigeons

 

Inexpressible sorrow in my soul

In this old city, of pigeons full:

There’s nothing birdlike in this bird, -

How much indifferent! Not motorcyclist,

Not figure of delivery screening barbarically,

Not pedestrian almost stepping on the tail –

Don’t frighten pigeon: it is unflappable,

It fenced off, having become all tame,

And he no more looks like the proud bird, -

What’s in it chickens, what will it smell out,

Does not yearn more of the dense woods,

Does not suspiciously soars in the free skies.

How he reminds me of the man:

The bird preferred electricity to moon!

Settled in city, stinking and rotten,

Unlearned to act with the given wing…

For this in the city, of the pigeons full,

There is inexpressible sorrow in my soul.


 

Without Us

 

From proud but strange feeling

It is not bitter sometimes:

Russia has anew been built

With others, not us, without us.

 

It is OK, if built poorly,

However it had been built:

You are strong without our warrior,

And our songs you do sing.

 

And we without homeland have remained,

And our view is pitiful and empty,

As if gnawing is white blackcurrant

Bush that is spreading.


 

The Distance Shines…

 

The distance shines, and in its shining, there,

It is fast, blue and rapid,

The dear Suda in influence tender

Upon the ripe riparian bread.

 

Its tributaries – Andoga and Kumba,

Nelaza, Kemza, Kolp and Shuloma –

Discovery of eighty-year-old Columbus,

I see you from myriad crowds.

 

With you, rivers, is bound this,

Unforgettable for all times,

Reeking with gillyflower’s freshness

And saying the solid “Yes.”

 

In you so much fish is fished out in childhood,

On you my boat did slide:

My inflamed gratitude

To you, Old Novgorod lands!

 

My Sheksna, and Yagorba, and Suda,

Where shined the first love,

Where to become a poet, in lynching power,

Predetermined to me the chopped blood.

 

Again to see you – it is my desire,

Invincible like spring, …

The day shines, and in its shining, there,

Is blueness of my merged rivers.


 

Sperata

 

They tie us twenty years – third of life,

And you are especially dear to me,

And I wanted before you to die:

My love to the coffin truly.

 

Although of love you do not tell,

Your silence is to me more than anything fond.

Berlin, Sofia, Paris and Belgrade –

All this is ours, without a word.

 

Always favorable the sky has been

To us in the time when we were together:

Let from Serbia the railcar drag into abyss,

Let shake the soil in Bucharest,

 

Let threaten, letting blackmail in the path,

With murder the hysteric in Chisinau –

Always light ends ours

Hard road, and happiness was new.

 

I am guilty unforgivably

Before you, poured with talent,

Distinct aroma from your poems pours,

Having from distance in the time swooped down.

 

I knew you, rejecting the lie,

In happy, spring dress of a teen.

Yours before me, with you proud entirely,

Ah, not one salmon caught has been!

 

And thus prayerfully my poems you love

With marginal provided beauty.

Your taste upon my poems does shine

With dew living before thee.

 

To you the nature the honor has ordered!

You are in her. With eyes having peered

The Baltic steel, thus you love to sit

Upon the shore, dreaming, the sea’s daughter!

 

With the soft smile, but steel with

She saw about the poet,

Against him in advance and as remains –

Already not long! – life’s all quirks…

 

One dream: to you to return,

O, irretrievable loss! In

My fate as it was saved by Lord

You’re Sperata, the heroine of Goethe.


Igor Severyanin

 

He’s good with that, he is not it at all,

That thinks of him the empty crowd,

Not reading poems by principle,

That there is no pineapple and no auto.

 

Fox trot, cinema and lotto –

Here, where does rush the human crowd?

And between them simple is your soul,

Like the spring day. But who knows?

 

Blessing the world, the curse to wars

He sends in verse, worthy of confession,

Sometimes slightly joking, lightly mourning  

 

Over eternally leading planet…

He – in each song, sung from the heart, -

Children ironic.


 

Pallas

 

She was lean, like deadly sin,

And unrealizably miniature…

I remember only her fur and lips,

Hiding all and shuddering in storm.

 

Laughter, like cough. Like laughter, cough.

And this mouth – urn of countless ashes…

I met with her the Bohemes – those,

Who lived selflessly-adventurous…

 

Ugly and faded Gumilev

Loves to lower before pearls the words,

Subtle George Ivanov –

 

To drink Jewish delights – throw on bonfire…

Each man became sharp,

Feeling the sophisticated Pallas.


 

Tyutchev

 

Dream of nature, thinking cane,

Slave in love with luxurious malaria,

Hiding dumb words in the mind,

Wilted to near heart, unclear.

 

Evening day superstitious kind,

In last love are the feelings,

Blissful hopelessness. Russia

Reached them. And Tyutchev reached them.

 

In silence sees long-suffering land,

Thus it washes the hamlets weedy

With loudly boiling cup of rage of Hebe.


 

Bunin

 

In these poems – happy drops,

Shining with mica mountain slopes,

And by the young birch sung

And baptistry of spring waters. Song to sun.

 

Transparent poem, like April of the north.

And he runs with the transparent water,

Or with the icy star he warms,

In it is some alert, hop sober.

 

Comfort of manors in fall’s time leaves,

Good pleasure of loneliness.

Rifle. Dog. Oka of grey.

 

Soul and air are chained in crystal.

Stones. Wine. Feather from soft steel.

Sorrow for an alienated dame.


 

Verlaine

 

Absinthe, feeding the rudeness of Apache,

In it tender shades awoke.

Exterminated body walls

In flight the inebriated soul.

 

He, emptying with wine depth of soul,

Likened to demi-monde itself,

Whom into patient took doctor Horror,

And with smile, without hurry put to death.

 

With the musical veil he fans,

With ideal sadness he threatens,

In it the azure fog’s prison.

 

Untranslatable with refinements,

Not in it deep, dear in foreignness,

Unrepeatable Paul Verlaine.


 

Bryusov

 

He was ignited by invocatory cry,

Who – innovator or Batyj - had cried…

At once the ambitious one dry,

Accepting mutiny, to reach him had hurried.

 

Over the routine flew frightful whip

Assuredly clamped in a hand,

With generous payment paid the novelty

In European style tailored Moscovite.

 

To be born trader and become a poet,

How often voice plucked in falsetto,

In to all lips insatiable!

 

All life dreaming of you, in pig iron,

Ready to sing the song to coming Huns,

He did not spare – himself – before all.


 

Kuzmin

 

In poems refined till flatness –

As if a chronic influenza,

In face the newborn’s outline,

Cherished in dreams is passion to the teens.

 

Strangled in nets of aesthetics,

He threw the knees not without success,

And he had the baby’s spirit,

That in the doves made of mud withered.

 

He’s piteous, compassionate and pitiful,

But for what from all the vials

And vulgar roses smell disturbs?

 

And not because, that at him, poser,

Sorrow the eyes – lakes of autumn,

That he, - prodigal, - is brother of God?


 

Mayakovsky

 

With put off – in him planted – poems

Finding the sales in vagabond neighbourhood,

What mediocrity makes pads from them,

In divine sense he is, of course, rude.

 

He sings the hymns to all seven sins,

Unsurpassed in the throat of demonstration.

In him yearn the whips of the historians

To come for all the hymns.

 

In other conditions I myself, rather,

This naughty child, he was another,

Blasphemer, jester and Preskensy Apache;

 

In him there’s too much prowess and might,

How full are our groves since ancient times,

He is too much Russian, too much ours!


 

Gippius

 

Her lorgnette is merciless-arrogant,

Piercingly-shiny is her lorgnette.

In her lips equally “no” with a curse

And, like folding, blessing “yes.”

 

Here creativity, which is not for the day

And for not ladies is the ladies’ cabinet….

I pour lie into her assigned sonnet,

Like pout into wineglass the grapes’ ferment.

 

And if in the lyric she is weak

(Her fate – her does mock!) –

In skill to see to her not equal weakness.

 

More transparent than ice is Scandinavian blood,

And storm upon the sea for all time is chained

With her autocratic surface.


 

Saltykov-Schedrin

 

Is it not awful – from provincial fools

And foolish women, natives of Poshehonye,

In final stages of the sleep chilled,

The undead pompadour is tenacious?

 

The troubadour sounds with indiscretion,

Whose voice, the lawlessness shaking,

Wished in the land the fruitless burial,

Whose sense is heavy, gloomy and spiteful.

 

Rots, stinks from the corpses that move

Eternally indestructible city of Glupov –

Russian, everywhere, wicked.

 

Judeans from each hole climb.

They overcome the country. Did overcome.

And there’s no hope. Where is another fate?


 

George Ivanov

 

In days of the school-warrior chase

He was two-faced and duplicitous:

A big flatterer and nonviolent friend,

Treacherous page and eternal epigon.

 

What to the heartless means the law

Of love, uncharacteristic capital of jester,

To whom seemed decent to the soul

Glorified the third class of railcar.

 

And if this – all clear remains,

Feather, with which it’s enough pus,

Is dipped not in its own blood.

 

And thirst for other feelings, like fisherman – bite;

He looks “like Gumilev almost”,

What falls into the eyes, passing the brow…


 

Dumas

 

Childhood days. Novgorod winter.

The leaves of tomes, like leaves amber.

Ah, there are no brushes more ingenious,

Just as there are no more ingenious thoughts.

 

Exciting mess,

Three musketeers, the Monte Cristo’s fate,

You – knighthood, you – honor of unselfishness,

The brilliant Alexander Dumas.

 

All your life is like a tale rare,

With object of publicity of Homer,

You were forever, great magician.

 

Loving you, like in the time,

Before you I bow with banners of mine,

Target of grins of the workaday men.