Konstantin Balmont

To work with darkness, colors and sunbeams,
To set in fragile casing of the sonnets
Two pearls of dew, three light’s enchanting droplets,  
A thought that’s born by novelty of dreams,

In dear eyes, to see that fire gleams,
In songs of birds, to hear morning greeting,
And thus to live through spring and summer fleeting,
And in cold winter pour hot kisses’ streams.

And is this, truly, the convivial science,
Of which a circle, being in his prime,
The thinking bard must finish in his time?

To watch again in mental gulfs of sounds
Whether it’s seen – flame of the trace, sublime, 
Of summer, gone with comets, tales and rime.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2003