Margarita Aliger

The dear tragedies of brilliant Shakespeare!
The detailed chronicles of the English kings,
sun and deep darkness, ardency and fear,
fire of feasts and cold of armors’ ring.

Again they argue  – flippancy and wisdom,
virtue and perfidy, the scheming  and insight;  
again a villain grabs the whole kingdom, 
again a hero rises for his fight.

These bloody hands among the flames and ruins, 
bowls with poison, and the rusty swords --
are real torments of the real humans,
laments in night, cry of the tortured souls.

Prayers for mercy, for divine salvation, 
struggle with fate – the everlasting strife, --
they – only people, with their minds and passions,
and drastic lessons of the death and life.

Oh! is it real that my troubles, fierce,
my errors’ burden and my soul’s plight 
might once be changed to monologs of heroes
or to the sound, endless one and high?

Oh! is it real, that the thoughts, me captured,
my flights and falls on my life’s roads, heard,
might ever throw somebody in rapture,
or even stress the living humane heart?

That yore was heard as indistinctive singing, --
sounds from distance with more might and grace:  
maybe, our destinies are only the beginning
of future chronicles of these burning days.
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, April, 2001