Pavel Antokolsky

A Dream! Midsummer Night! The torches’ blaze aroused 
In leaves of the nightly park! It’s as if there
Shakespeare were ranging with a pack of hounds,
Pursuing gentle does everywhere.

The metaphors’ horns there sound. This is certain,
That, veiled with emeralds of wings of dragon-flies,
Titania fells in the love with Bottom,
As soon as Shakespeare mentions him just once. 

There, there she is – she foams in the glasses!
There, There she is – in a flight of fire-flies,
In the flight that’s nuptial! Look, how she glances!
Such, perhaps, is the dance of haven stars.

But aren’t fir-trees such shaggy in the thickets,
Isn’t half the sky bathed in the blue moonlight,
And no one’s in the whole earth who listens
To the warbling sounds of the flutes at night?

Are there not flutes, nor – violins, nor -- oboes?
Midsummer Night’s Dream! Why do you transgress   
The narrow confines of humane dreams and sorrows
To the marching sounds of the oceans surfs?

The early dawn may chill you to the marrow
With cold a rain and bend you crooked, as well,
They may give you no payment – those fellows,
And say that they will see you in the hell.

Shakespeare will leave the stage on open air.
When his footsteps have not be heard at last,
The emeralds, unwanted, small and fair,
Will fade in darkness of the summer grass.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, December, 2000