Bella Akhmadulina

Oft it comes thus: the kind of pleasant languor,
The clock’s weak chiming sounds in my ear,
And far pills of the passing thunder’s anger.
It seems to me, that I can badly hear
The mournful prays of the slaved alien voices,
The secret circle tends to be the small, 
But in that gulf of bells and whispers, causeless,
Appears the sound that than covers all.
And all’s so quiet it around
That you can hear in woods the growing grass,
The evil, going o’er the silent ground . . .
But now I discern the coming words, at last,
The little bells of rimes, elated –
Then I begin to rightly fathom these,
And the new lines, such clearly dictated,
Simply lie down on the snowy list.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, July 10, 2006