Samuel Marshak

I

We wait for harvests from the branches best
To rise a beauty lost of time-made losses,
Let all ripe roses are to die at rest, 
They are recalled by younger, fresher roses.
But you, whose beauty is your own god,
To whom you give your soul and your wishes,
Transfer abundance into dearth and dirt –
You are your enemy, the cruel and ambitious.
You – an adornment of a current day,
The herald of the spring that will be shortest –
Buries the future on its starting way,
Uniting greed with devastating losses.

Pitting the world, don’t doom to cold of earth
The fairy harvest of the future years. 


II

When your brow will be deeply traced 
By forty winters’ like a freezing curse --
Who will remember purple of Caesars’ dress,
Looking with grin at miser rags of yours?
And to the question: “Where are they disguised –
The crumbs of beauty of the happy days?”
What will you answer? In extinguished eyes?
But evil mockery will sound in this phrase.
The decant answer has another word:
“Look at the children here born and bred.
They bear my former freshness to the world
And justify my faultiness to be aged.” 

Let failing along time blood’s fire
In all your heirs be revived entire!


III

You see, in a glass, your beautiful reflection, 
And if you don’t repeat all features these, 
The nature will be put to devastation,
And woman lost of her prevailing bliss.
And which she-mortal will not be the happiest
To give to you virginity untouched?
Or, maybe, you don’t want to be the endless,
Because you charmed by you yourself too much?
For mother’s eyes, you’re always the reflection,
Of springy days, left very far behind,
And, in old age, you’ll find the consolation,
In your youth’s windows of the same blessed kind.

But having circled your life just by your fortune,
Will die you self, your image and your virtue.


IV

My dear waster, you unwisely spend
Your charming legacy in your self-liking madness.
Nature doesn’t give these charms to us, it lends
Them to us, free, in liberty and greatness.
Oh, beauteous miser, you’re glad to make your,
The thing that you’ve received to pass to others.
You low hide the treasures, but therefore,
Not making self more prosperous, rather.
You strike your bargains just with you yourself,
Loosing in them your profit’s main amount;
And in an hour, world is to be left,
What will be written in your last account?

And the sweet image of the future times
Will fell in grave with you – not realized.


V

The canning time, with its exquisite craft,
Secretly makes a feast for our eyes,
While in a run, the circled one and apt,
Carrying away all that was bliss for us.
The mighty stream of hours and days
Leads virgin summer into winter’s dusk,
Where leaves are absent, and a trees’ sop stays
Dead like the earth, with a white cloak masked.
And just aroma of the flow’rs fresh –
The flying elf imprisoned in a glass – 
Recalls to us, through frost and blizzard’s mesh,
That there was summer on the planet once.

Though a shine of flowers is harmed, 
But they preserved the soul of their charm.  


VI

Never allow the impassive hand 
Of grayish winter to access your garden,
Until you’ve gathered flow’rs off a bed,
To have your spring in a glass flagon gardened.
Like one, who’d given priceless grant to men,
And then received it back with a good profit,
You’ll be glad to return you self again
To you yourself with ten times more of all it.
Ten more times you’ll leave on this great earth,
Ten more times repeated in your children,
And you’ll have rights to say before your death
That you rewrote what the death has written.

You’re much too richly gifted with your fortune
For making dead with you your priceless virtue.


VII

When the morn sun lifts up his flaming head
From his night bed on heaven’s eastern side,
With what a gladness, all the earthly sends
Its salute to the mighty god of light.
When in a noon, at his full might and size,
The sun looks dawn from an awful height,
With what elation millions of eyes
Follow wheels of his surprising cart. 
When, tired, he rolls down to the West,
Closing a circle of his daily strive,
The eyes of all his former slaves and fans
Look at the other idols of their life.

Burying your youth, do leave your own son
To meet the rays of the next morning’s sun.


VIII

You’re a great music, But the music greatest 
You listen to in deepest pine and plight.
Why do you like just that that brings you sadness,
And meet your torture with a great delight?
What is the secret of this strong dejection?
Maybe, your heart is such upset and tingled
Because sweet sounds in a fine connection
Are heard like sore reproach to the single.
Just listen how, so friendly opened,
Joints to the common chorus every string – 
As if some father, mother, and their moppet
In happy unanimity make sing.

And sings to us a beautiful strings’ chorus,
“A single man’s led nowhere by his roads.”


IX

I think, afraid of bitter widows’ tears,
You bound self with no female lover, 
But if your fate were ban you to exist,
The world would carry the black widows’ cover.
A widow, mournful, finds in her own child
Beloved features’ beautiful reflection,
But you do not leave you yourself behind
Someone to be for world a consolation.
Ancestors’ treasures that a spendthrift wastes,  
Tho’ changing place, stay in the real here,
But beauty vanishes not leaving any trace,
And youth, once gone, will never reappear.   

He, who betrays his own sacred soul,
Loves nothing in the cosmos whole.

 
X

Tell me the truth: just who is your beloved?
You know, many fell with you in love,
But so forcefully you make your love deprived,
That none will ever faith to all your prove.
Your mortal enemy, you, knowing no mercy,
Destroy in secret, every day and night,
The house that was beautiful and healthy,
That your ancestors gave you to make bright.
Do change yourself, and my offence’s forgotten,
Let only love abides in all your heart,
As you are beautiful, be so gentle and soften,
And be to you more generous and kind.

Let beauty lives not just today in proud,
But recreates self in a son beloved.


XI

We wane as fast as fast we grow all
In our new harvest, in a good descendant,
Excess of strengths, that in your scion boil,
Consider yours in a half-life that’s second. 
There is the law of beauty and insight,
Without which the world were an empire
Of age and madness till the end of light,
And light would fail when sixty years expire.
Let him, not suiting to the life and earth – 
The faceless one and ruff – entire perish,
But you’ve received such wonderful a wealth,
That your payback can be provided lavish.

You are a seal, that life had curved and blessed
To pass trough times your beautiful impress.

 
XII

When clock tells me that blessed daily light
Will soon be taken by the night away,
When violets lose colors, gentle and bright,
And, former black, curls silver with a gray,
When along roads winds drive withered leaves,
Which shaded herds before in summer noon,
And nod us dense beards of the grayish sheaves
From solemn carts – to join their deathly swoon –
I think about your unearthly charms,
About time when they’ll be forced to wane,
Like all the flowers of the wood and plain,
When all the new is ready to make rise.

But if ‘tis merciless – the sharp scythe of death,
Leave your descendents to defy it else. 


XIII

Don’t change yourself. Be always as you are.
You can be you, while you are still alive.
When death will crash what you were so far,
Let somebody, like you, continue life.
The nature gave you beauty for your leas
For very shot a period of time,
Therefore you have to pass great treasure this
To heir of yours, legitimate and prime.
In hands, full care of the house fair,
It will defy the fierce winter gusts,
And never they will govern over there –
The cruel death, white coldness and grim dusk.

And let, at time when you are laying dead,
Someone will say, “He was my own dad!”


XIV

I don’t tell fortune, using stars of heaven,
And all astronomy will not inform me forth
Which stars of skies could ever be relevant
To coming plagues or poverty or wars.
I do not know what a kind of weather
Must sequence of the future seasons wait,
And for my sight, the sky couldn’t be a measure
Of princes’ heights or fallings in their fate.
But I can read, in eyes of your, prediction –
I see it clear in the constant stars –
That charm with truth will make a coalition,
If you continue living in your heirs.

If you does not – under a gloom tombstone
Will vanish truth and beauty that you’d owned.


XV

When I think sadly that a single moment
There separates a growth from a wane,
That this huge world – a stage, on which ignorant
Pictures are fleshing under cold stars’ reign. 
That we, like plants, defenseless ones and gentle,
Are raised and killed by the same lofty sky,
That the spring sop, that in our veins was settled,
Along our years, is proscribed to die – 
Oh, how high I price then your spring’s years,
Your charming youth in blossom and sunlight;
But time’s your foe, merciless and fierce – 
It drives your day into a dark of night.

Yet, let my poem, like a garden knife,
With new engrafting will restart you life.
    

XVI

But if time tends to siege your beauty proud,
Then why in blooming youthfulness of yours,
Don’t you erect a powerful redoubt,
That may be stronger than my helpless verse?
You have accessed the top of your life’s leafage,
And many young and virgin maiden’s hearts,
Wish to repeat your captivating image
Such as one couldn’t with any tools of arts.
Thus life will cure wounds it have made early,
And if you meet your love with all your heart,
You’ll live forever, happily and fairly… 
But my pen’s weak, though a little smart.

Merged with your love, you’ll be forever living,
Existing in a novel humane being.


XVII

How can I ever prove that you were fine, 
Leaving my page in the time-river flown?
The Lord does know, that shy verse of mine,
Could say no more than the vault’s gray stone.
If I make try to leave them your portrait,
Describe in lines your look of high perfection,
Next generations will consider that
I drew no man, but heavenly sensation.
And this so old and almost yellow page
They will reject like crazy old man’s babble,
Having just said, “Get out, you, false sage!
All your description is the useless fable.”

But should your son achieve the future times,
You’ll be alive in him as in my lines.


XXVIII

Should I compare you with a summer day?
But you much more temperate and sweeter.
A cruel wind breaks flowers of May,
And so shot is our time to meet her!
Sometimes we’re dazzled by a heaven eye,
Sometimes it’s hidden by a nasty weather.
The Nature sends to us her caresses and pine,
In her chanced whims not knowing a measure.
But your life’s day is of the constant length,
It’s summer’s fresh and full of sunny favor,
And you’ll be never shadowed by a death, -
And you will live in poet’s lines forever.  

You will exist among the men alive
While breast is breathing and is seeing eye.


XIX

Oh cruel time, make lion’s claws quit flat,
And leopard’s teeth - thrown into mud,
And earthly creatures - into dust transferred,
And the old phoenix - burnt in her cold blood.
In summer, spring, in winter and in fall,
Put tears and cry instead of laugh and song  
Make what you wish to me and Cosmos all,
But I forbid you making only wrong:
The cheeks and brow of my dear friend
Don’t plow with your chisel, blunt and blind,
Let all his beauty will forever stand
As an example for the heart and mind.

And if you have no pity for his face,
My modest poem will be what him saves.


XX

The woman’s face! But with much more perfection,
It was created by the nature’s art
Tho’ sweet like woman, you defy attraction
For adulatory, oh, king-queen of my heart.
Your gentle look voids of a play, unfair,
But gilds all things around with its shine;
And, full of manhood, with its lordly manner
It slaves your friends and pierces ladies fine.
Nature planned you to be the female-wonder,
But brought by passion to her own knees,
She put us both mercilessly asunder,
And pleasured women with your beauty’s bliss.

Let it be so, only I require:
Love me…  and grant them with your passion’s fire.  


XXI

I don’t compete with architects of verse,
Which, as a gift, to their she-idols worshiped
Present the whole heaven with the earth
And all blue waters of the global ocean.
Let them, for decoration of their lines,
Repeat in poems and their disputes sound,
The flowers’ wreaths and lights of heaven stars,
The dazzling treasures of the sea and ground.   
Truth is my single law in love and word,
And I do write that my sweetheart is fair,
Like all the brought by mothers in the world,
But not like sun’s or clear crescent’s glare.

My love is not to have been advertised –
It’s not for sell! It has not for market price!


XXII

All mirrors lie that I have grown old,
While I’m partaking your spring’s years in.
If your sweet image were by time deformed,
I would acknowledge that a fate did win.
Into your features looking like in glass,
I see me self a very young and fresh,
I feel in me your heart with its strong pulse,
And give to you one, of my own flesh.
So, my dear, try to guide yourself,
Not for yourself you bear a friend’s heart;
And I will always try to hold yours safe,
Like mother tries to hold her own child.

Both hearts of ours has their common fate –
If mine were stopped, your own too is dead.


XXIII

As that bad actor, having lost his nerves,
Loses a thread of a well-known role,
As that mad man, obsessed with fierce wrath,
In strengths’ excess, losses self-control wholly –
So, not knowing what to say, I’m mute
Not for the reason that my heart is cold: 
There is a seal that my great love has put
On my hot lips, making them numb and stoned.
Then let my book without sounds speaks
With you, as my unspoken intercessor;
Let it demand retaliation quick,
Seeing in you its Savor and Confessor.

Would ever you read my love’s, voiceless, words,
Catch with your sight my ever-wordless voice?


XXIV

My eye’s engraver; and the image yours
Has been imprinted in my heart precisely.
And now I’m a frame, embarrassing the most
Praised in the art – a ‘view’ we call it wisely. 
Through a good master look at craft itself
To see your portrait in a frame, quite privet.                      
That strange workshop, which now it preserves,
Is glazed with crystals of the eyes beloved.
My eyes are so friendly with your ones:
With your eyes I engrave you in my soul.
The golden sun, through your inspiring eyes,
Looks in a shop in magnitude its whole.

Alas! Behind this glass, your own heart
Is always out of my seeking sight.


XXV

Let he, who’s born under the happy star,
Brags with his fame, his power and title,
But fate of mine haven’t pampered me so far,
And for me love’s a Caesar mantle’s purple.
Under warm sun he spread his gorgeous leaves –
The prince’s confident, the creature of a lordship,
But when the light of golden sun it leaves,
The golden marigold wanes with his giver worshiped.
The proud general, used everywhere to win,
Fails just in one – the last of many battles,
And all his victories are vanished from the scene;
He is forgotten in disgrace and scant’ness.

But titles of mine are stable and unmoved:
Through all my life - I loved, I love, I’m loved. 


XXVI

The liegeman, humble and faithful to the king,
I, moved by love, respectful one and endless,
Direct to you my delegates’ long string,
In scripts, lost any intricate in phrases.
I haven’t find words that could be worth of you,
But if you see my senses with attention,
You’ll dress my men, the bare ones and poor,
In gorgeous wraps of your imagination.
And, maybe, constellations, leading me
Forward along the road, that’s obscure,
Will suddenly give prominence and glee
To fate of mine, so humble one and poor.

Then I will offer my love to your sight, - 
Until this time, I hide it in the night. 


XXVII

After a day, I, tired, want to sleep,
To have a rest from daily toil and mire,
But when I lie, again my road steep
Leads me to you through dream’s unfailing fire.  
My dreams and senses many hundred times
Go along the pilgrim’s sacred road,
But I can see with my exhausted eyes,
Just deadly darkness, the blind man’s abode.
With my sharp look of soul and of mind
I seek for you – dissatisfied and sightless – 
And only find a shadow of light,
When you have entered in this realm of darkness.

From my great love I cannot run away,
And day and night - I’m on my endless way. 


XXVIII

How can I ever overcome my plight,
When I’ve been striped of restfulness mine blessed?
The day’s hot troubles are not cooled by night,
And night, like day, leaves only tears’ traces.
And day and night – though used to be in fight –
As if shake hands in torturing succession:
I toil in day, a slave of fatal might, - 
In sleepless night, I grieve in separation.
To make a dawn been just a little kind,
I him compared with you, when he was clear,
And sent my compliments to the swart beauty-night,
Saying, her stars and you are equal here.

But it comes harder – every new day’s plight,
And, more darkened, follows it night.


XXIX

When in discord with destiny and world,
In view of years, full of my strive and pain,
I trouble the Heaven, so deaf and cold,
With my impossible to remedy complain,
And, sore accusing my unhappy fate,
Ready to change my destiny with one’s
Of him, who’s reached in art the brilliant state,
Who’s reach with hopes and by people praised, - 
Then, suddenly having remembered you,
I badly curse my shameful cowardice,
And, as a lark, into the heaven’s blue 
Against my fate, my happy soul flies.

With your great love, as I remember it,
There’s no a king whom I can not defeat.


XXX

When for a silent trial of deep thoughts
I call for voices of the days of yore,
My mind reviews all I have ever lost –
And I have fever of the past once more. 
My tearless eyes, pours tears for my friends fine,  
Who have been covered by the deathly darkness,
I seek for love, the perished love of mine,
And all of past that I’ve considered priceless.
Then all, I’ve lost, is in account set,
And I’m again shocked by my awful losses,
And I again pay for the dreadful set
Of things; I’ve paid for with a price, so godless.

But all my past I farther find in you,
Forgiving fate for former pain and new.


XXXI

In a breast of yours, I hear all the hearts
That I’ve considered being gone forever.
The charming image of your face regards
To the sweet faces of my soul’s favor.
Oh, how many had I poured a tear,
While bending o’er the sorrow grave’s stone.
But had a fate sent all them back to me
To leave me not in the cold world alone?
They met in you their endmost abode –
All those faces, so sweet and dear,
Which, bowing, give you the whole lot
Of my love’s particles I had once wasted here.

You represent all my beloved, since,
And I in you – in all of them – exist.


XXXII

If you would ever happily survive
The day when I am covered with a board,
And make reread the poems of my life,
That by my friendly hand I ever wrote, -
Will you compare me with the poets young?
Their art would be twice higher then my own,
But let, for you, my song be higher sung, 
‘Cause just by you my life was filled, alone.
‘Cause if I weren’t delayed on my strait way,
I would be able with my age to go, 
And to provide, on our descendents’ tray,   
The fruits that were with more attendance grown. 

But since they’re rivals of the poet dead,
Preserve my love and put their art ahead.


XXXIII

I often watched how the blessed sunrise
Caresses mountains with his enchanting glances,
Gilds a pale surface of the waters masses,
And sends to greens of meadows his smiles,
But very oft the firmament permits
Clouds to roam by the golden throne.
They crawl above the ground, left alone,
Deprived of all his lavish benefits.
Thus my sun rose for a shortest span,
Awarding me with gifts of his, embellished, 
Then came a cloud, fully blind and grayish –
And gentle colors of my love did wane.

But I don’t growl at my Fortune saddened, --
There’re sometimes clouds on the earth and heaven.


XXXIV

You promised me I would enjoy the day,
And I have left my cloak at my home,
But shade of clouds checked me on my way,
Sending a tempest from the heaven dome.
Tho’ after that your very gentle ray
Lay so easy on my wetted head,
- Just having broken through the cloud’s gray, -
My painful wounds were never by you healed.
I am not glad at your sore penitence, 
Nor pine of yours provides me any fun:
The sympathy of one who’d made offence,
Never heals ulcers it has brought on one.     

But these your tears, the rills of your tears-pearls –
They are the torrents, washing sins of yours!


XXXV

Don’t be in grieve, if you have wrongly done,
Roses have thorns, the clearest of rills
Are muddled by sand, the gorgeous moon and sun
Are marked by clouds or by eclipses.
We’re all in sins; and I am deeply in 
My sins in every of these bitter lines,
With my compares, warranting your sin,
Unduly purging your disgusting vise.
As your attorney, come I to a court,
To advocate for my adversary, -
My love and hatred with a bare sward                    
Incessantly make civil wars in me.

Tho’ you have robbed me, my sweet brigand, yet,
I’m doomed with you as your abettor-mate.


XXXVI

I can confess that we are here two,
Though our love is our common lot.
I do not want, my any vises through,
To stain your honor with a single blot.
Though love confines us with a single thread,
But in our life our bitterness defers.
It could not make our love diminished, yet,
But steals a lot of time from love’s affairs.
Like one who’s doomed, I have not any right
To show you my credits in the world,
And you’d not take my bow in your sight,
Unless it stains your honor with a blot.

Let it be so! But my love’s so fine,
That I am yours, and honor yours is mine!


XXXVII

As an old father’s proud with his youths’ -
His legal scions’ - courage and elation,
So by your own prominence and truth
I’m fully charmed in my humiliation.
Benevolence, nobility and charm,
High intellect, strengths, health of body youthful –
Almost all your splendid features come
To me through love yours, so great and truthful.
No, I’m not weak nor poor nor distressed, 
And even shadow of the love, I own,
Always brings me such torrents of largesse,
That I can live by their small drop alone.

All which I ever wish to you – all this,
Descends from you on me like endless bliss.


XXXIX

Oh, how can I sing to you your fame,
When we are two in one under the skies?
To glorify me self is just a shame, - 
The shame’s to please me self with own praise.
With just one goal we do live apart –
To see your beauty with my own eyes,  
To help your heart to heed my song of heart
That pays you glory with your only price.
Parting’s as hard, as any illness is,
But, sometimes, length of the alone path
Gives leisure to the best of our dreams,
And shortens time-spans, separating us.

Parting divides the common heart by halve
To help us to exalt our beloved. 


XL

Take all my loves, take all my passions – all! – 
A little profit you will gain in whole.
All that as ‘love’ was by the people called
Still has been long a property your royal.
I do not try to image as your fault
That you robbed me of best what I have owned
And only one rebuke for you I hold,
That you had pushed my love off your life’s road.
You striped a beggar of his scanty bag,
But I’ve forgiven you, my charmer low.
The love’s offences are less dirty rags,
Than battered ones of the discarding row.

Oh, you, whose evil’s seemed to me as good,
Kill me by spite, but let we have not feud.


XLI

The blind offences of your youthful years,
You bring to me, not fixing on your mind,
When I am out of your heart and grace, -
Suit to your image and your years behind.
The gentle one – you are a prey for bluffs
The beautiful – you’re opened for a lure;
And to caresses of the artful wives
A woman’s son would not withstand, for sure.
But I am sorry that in strengths’ excess,
You did not missed me for you folly youthful,
And did not give me mercy in heart’s stress,
Where you was twice more cruel and untruthful.

Having won her, unfaithful, with your charms,
You twice took truth off my compliant arms.


XLII

That you have her is my halve-woe, in main,
But just to see and comprehend that she
Owns you too – give me twice more pain.
Loss of your love is most pain for me.
But I myself have justified you both:
Having loved me, you fell with her in love
And your sweetheart agreed to love of yours
Because you are the best of all my life.
And if I’m doomed to loosing in a privet,
I present you all of my painful loss:
Her own love found my friend beloved,
And your beloved found love of yours.

But if my friend and I are two in one,
Then, as before, I am her golden sun.


XLIII

With opened eyes I see there none to praise,
With closed eyes – I have a better view,
But bright is vision of my sightless eyes,
When in my dreams, direct I them at you.
And if so many lights is in night’s shade –
In a reflection of your shade obscure – 
Then how’s great a light, you daily shed,
How life is brighter than night dreams of you!  
Oh, what it’d be an endless happiness,
If, having waked at morn, I’m chanced to see,
In rays of day, your clear image, blessed,
That in dead night shed it’s dusk light at me.

Day, void of you! - as deepest night it’s seemed!  
And day with you is in my sleeping dreamed.


XLIV

When this flesh were become a thought of mind -
Oh, how easy, through the Fortune’s fuss,
I’d overcome the distance that divides
Unhappy us, and come to you at once.
And if I were in the most distant land,
I’d easy pass halve of the planet’s ball. 
To thoughts – an ocean is a narrow strait,
They fly through it, as soon as took a goal.
Tho’ my soul is a spirit and a flame,
But, I, who’s made of water and of dust.
Can not create velocities the same, 
As do a thought, born by a brain by chance.

I am an earth – my roots are in the earth,
Water I am – my bitter tears - its flows.


XLV

The other two great substances of worlds –  
The easiest two – are sacred air and fire.
I send to you, in spite of spaces’ plots,
Breath of my thought and flame of my desire.
When these two free and easy elements
Are starting flight with my sincere message,
I stay behind with substances, the rest,
And their hard weight invokes my soul’s damage.
Lost of my balance, I’m in endless pine,
Until the substances of air and fire, dear,
Come back to me with information fine:
‘I am alive! I didn’t forget you here!’

And I am happy! But a short time’s span –
And my two basics fly to you again. 


XLVI

My eye and heart are in the bloody fight,
They did not know how to share you.
My heart intends to hide you self inside,
My eye demands you for its whole view.
The faithful heart does pledge that in its deeps,
Unseen for eye, you safely abide – 
The eye is sure that your image sleeps
In the clear mirror on his own site.
Then judges-thoughts convened, and they accused
The animosity and the incessant fight – 
They made decision that installed a truce
‘Twix the true heart and crystal-clear sight:

Each side received the most treasured part –
My heart – your heart, my eye – your clear sight.


XLVII

My heart and eye are in the secret truce – 
They make less painful tortures of each other:
When with your absence my poor look abused,
And heart can’t live in separation farther, – 
My artful eye gives your alive portrait
To my poor heart as somewhat consolation,
And my mild heart – when it is apt in that – 
Lends to my eye a part of dreamy passion.
Thus, in my thoughts or in the real flesh,
You’re before me in every fleeting moment,
My thought’s with you in a life’s stressing mesh – 
We’re two in one – a substance and its solvent.

My look creates your image in my dream,
And wakes my heart from drowsiness its grim.


XLVIII

Preparing home for my longtime path,
I’ve closed all my trifles under lock –
Unless some one, unbidden, would there thrust,
And steal away the very precious stock.
But you, for me more precious than my life,
Compared with whom, gold is a glossy junk, – 
My consolation and my sorrow love –
You can be stolen by a usual skunk.
In what a casket can I hide your grace
To make it safe forever by a bar, 
Unless in my heart’s vulnerable space, 
From which you’re always free to flee afar?

And even there, they’d steal the priceless pearl 
That is attractive everywhere for all!


XLIX

In that black day – let it would pass us by –
When you will see all lot of my transgress,
When you will loose your nerve with sins of mine
And will declare me your endmost sentence,
When having met me in the worldly throng,
You’ll scarcely cast your clear glance at me
And I shall see the peace and cold strong
In face of yours as fine as it must be, –
In that black day, my pine will be assuaged, 
With understanding of my lower state
And I will raise my hand in my last pledge,
With my non-rightness proving right all that.

You’re free to leave me for my great distress –
I have not any right for happiness.   


L

How it is hard for me on my way dust,
Not waiting something from the journey else,
To calculate the quantity of miles,
I’ve been deprived on from my happiness.
My tied horse, having forgot his vim,
Just lazily trots under his rider hard,
As if he knows none will ever stream,
Going away from his beloved heart.
He’s doesn’t react to spurs, striking him on,
And only sends to me his neigh-appeal. 
And I’m more strongly wounded by this moan,
Then my poor horse – by strikes of bloody steel.

I think, observing the horizon’s line:
Behind me – joy and before me – just pine.


LI

Thus I was warranting the most distressful trait
Of my so lazy, so stubborn horse, 
Which was quite right in such behavior’s course,
When he was dragging me to deportation sad.
But it would be the most awful sin,
If he were got me back in the same styles. 
If I were riding on the wind through miles,
I’d think, ‘Oh, how slow it creeps in!’
The best of horses wouldn’t catch a will,
When rapidly it gallops with a neigh –
It’ll spread self easy as a fire will, 
Having informed a jade on her dull way:

‘You’re free to drag yourself, oh, poor thing,
But I’ll fly forward with my airy wing!’


LII

As a reach man, I always have access
To hidden in my basement immense treasure,
But I do know that it’s wrong to press
On a slim point-time of a sward-pleasure.
And those feasts, because they’re very rare,
Bring with themselves a lot of warm and gladness:
They seldom shine in strings of stones fair – 
The priceless brilliants of the jeweled necklace. 
Then let time hide, like any coffer does,
You, oh, my friend – my ever precious crown,
But I am happy when its brilliant, bound,
It will make free, like any wind, at last.

You send to me the Eden of a date
And thrilling joy to think of you and wait


LIII

Of what strange substance you’ve been ever done?
Million a shadow wave you self behind,
Though it is clear ev’n for simple mind,
That every one has shadow only one.
Look at Adonis – the enchanting god,
He’s just a cheapest duplicate of yours;
Helen’s a wonder of the ancient world, – 
You’re ancient arts, born in the newest forms.
The virgin spring and summer, late and ripe,
Store your sight from out and inside,
You’re full of bounty like every harvest’s stripe,
Your image, like a day of spring, is bright.

We call all ‘yours’, that’s wonderful and fair,
But with what would we the true heart compare?


LIV

The beautiful is better hundred times,
When by a sacred truth it’s always crowned.
We praise red roses, but much more they’re praised
For the aroma in their purple proud.
Let of the flowers, in which cancer nests,
A stem, a thorn, a leave – like of the healthy,
And such a color is with purple blest,
And such a hallo seems alive and wealthy, –
They bloom, not pleasing any heart or breath,
And fade forgotten, making poisoned air,
But real roses has another ‘death’:
Their soul’s poured into a fragrance fair.

When will extinguish light of eyes of yours,
All charm of truth will be distilled in verse.


LV

The mossy marble of the lieges’ graves
Will vanish earlier than my so fragile word,
In which I saved your admirable grace.
Time will not cover it with dust and dirt.
Though bloody wars cast statues into mud, 
And blind revolts abolish masons’ toil,
My sacred scriptures, chiseled in the mind,
Will not be handled by the time at all.
You’ll be not send to bottom by the death,
Nor by forgetfulness – that envious fiend.  
And you’re obliged with your descendants, else,
To see great Doomsday at the all-times’ end.

So, live, until you will be waked at last, – 
In lines of poems and in deeps of hearts! 


LVI

Wake up, love-sward! And tell me, is your sting
Blunter than one in thirst’s and hunger’s dance?
Though the feast could be a fitting thing,
You can’t be fitted for all life at once.
So is love. Its look of hunger-pain
Is satisfied today – to the extortion,
But morrow comes, and you’re again in flame
Of greatest fire, born by great emotion.
To have our love for us forever cost
Let separation be the ocean endless,
Let each of us, standing on different coasts,
Stretch’s to another hands with utter sadness.

Let separation be the winter’s cold
To feel spring days as warmest manifold.


LVII

For faithful servants there is naught, in whole,
But just to wait for mistresses, sublime.
Thus, for your whims to play the servant’s role,
I spend in painful waiting all my time.
Watching the hands of clocks with strained attention,
I do not chime a hard bore in my heart,
Nor curse the bitter plight of separation,
To your short sign gone your doors outside.
I do not let my thoughts, often so jealous,
Go behind the once positioned line,
And, as poor slave, I consider blessed the fellows,
Who ever had an hour of yours, fine.   

Do what you wish. I’ve lost a sense of vision,
And all you do is good in my decision.


LVIII

Forbid me God, who’d striped me of my will,
That I would dare to check your leisure’s play,
To count hours and to wait until
Deals of a mistress would include her slave. 
Call me to you whenever you desire,
And, till this time, I should endure my pain.
My fate’s to wait until you’ll be entire
Free to see me, and try to not complain.
Whenever you’re in deals or entertainment – 
You are a mistress of your own fate.
And if you were a reason for your lament,
You can forgive you in your lofty state.

In all these hours of your troubles and languor
I wait for you – in pine, but void of anger… 


LIX

If there’s naught new under the sunny light,
But just repeating of the days of yore,
And we are doomed to everlasting plight
To give a birth to all that’s old, once more, – 
Let our remembrance, having run behind 
Five hundred circles that the sun imposed,
In the old book, will be endowed to find
Your dear image, saved in words composed.
Then I’d be known what they thought in past
About this wonder, so complex-perfect,
Whether we’ve gone far forward or they’d thrust…
Or this there world hasn’t any changing effect.

But I am sure, that the best of words
Were then composed for the idol worse.


LX

Like the sea tide toward the flat shore moves,
So the rows of minutes, newly born,
Tending to take the place of perished ones,
Run into ages in their own turn. 
The youthful crescent of the happy birth
Speeds to the golden ripeness, and at last,
It’s in a grave in eclipses’ black cloth,
Its golden crown’s thrown into dust.
The hard years’ chisel, on the brow of life,
Curves a deep line after another one;
And the cold scythe of the existing strife
Rips all the best that was by this world done.

But time will never cut my poem’s breath,
In which you’ll live against a curse of death.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, February, 2001 - March, 2002