Aleksandr Pushkin

For shores of home, so sweet but distant,
You were to leave the alien place;
The hour was sad and instant,
And tears were running on my face.
With chilly hands, with bitter passion,
I vainly tried to keep you up;
The awful pain of separation
I prayed you to not interrupt.

But you, from the distressing kissing,
Betook away your gentle lips,
From lands of sad exile and missing
You called me for another sweeps.
You told me, "In a day of meeting,
Under the sky that ever blue,
In shade of olive-trees the kissing
We shall, my friend, begin anew."

But there, alas!, where sky grew hotter
And bluer in a sunny beam,
Where olive-trees cast shade on water,
You lay asleep with your last dream.
Your beauty, suffering, your anguish
Had vanished in the gravest urn;
With them, the promised kiss had vanished ...
Still I am waiting for your turn ...


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, March, 1997
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, December, 1999