Works

Along the hard crust of deep snows,
To the secret, white house of yours,
So gentle and quiet ' we both
Are walking, in silence half-lost.
And sweeter than all songs, sung ever,...

An as it's going often at love's breaking,
The ghost of first days came again to us,
The silver willow through window then stretched in,
The silver beauty of her gentle branches....

And Pushkin's exile had begun right here,
And Lermontov's expulsion had been "canceled."
There is the easy grasses' scent on highland.
And only once it chanced to me to see it --...

As a white stone in the well's cool deepness,
There lays in me one wonderful remembrance.
I am not able and don't want to miss this:
It is my torture and my utter gladness.
...

Celebrate our anniversary ' can't you see
tonight the snowy night of our first winter
comes back again in every road and tree -
that winter night of diamantine splendour.
...

Do not cry for me, Mother, seeing me in the grave.

I

This greatest hour was hallowed and thandered
By angel's choirs; fire melted sky.
He asked his Father:"Why am I abandoned...?"...

Although this land is not my own,
I will remember its inland sea
and the waters that are so cold
the sand as white
as old bones, the pine trees
strangely red where the sun comes down.
...

Everythings looted, betrayed and traded,
black deaths wings overhead.
Everythings eaten by hunger, unsated,
so why does a light shine ahead?

By day, a mysterious wood, near the town,...

And the town is frozen solid in a vice,
Trees, walls, snow, beneath a glass.
Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice,
the painted sleighs and I, together, pass.
And over St Peters there are poplars, crows...

Hands wrought under the dark veil…
“What is it that makes you so pale and faint?”
- I’m afraid that I made him drunk with the ale
Of bitter anguish and torturous pain....

How can you bear to look at the Neva?
How can you bear to cross the bridges?.
Not in vain am I known as the grieving one
Since the time you appeared to me.
The black angels' wings are sharp,...

I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
Or only when the sunsets fade
Be mourned serenely in my thought?

All is for you: the daily prayer,
The sleepless heat at night,...

I hear the oriole's always-grieving voice,
And the rich summer's welcome loss I hear
In the sickle's serpentine hiss
Cutting the corn's ear tightly pressed to ear.
And the short skirts of the slim reapers...

Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,...

The cats are meowing woefully nearby,
I hear somebody distant walking slow…
Your words were a delightful lullaby:
They’ve kept me up for three months in a row.
O, insomnia, you’ve come to me anew!...

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine...

I wrung my hands under my dark veil. . .
"Why are you pale, what makes you reckless?"
-- Because I have made my loved one drunk
with an astringent sadness.

I'll never forget. He went out, reeling;...

And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
...

As a snake, coiling up in a knot,
At the very heart she's conjuring.
Or the whole day she like a tiny dove
On the window white is tender cooing.
Or she sparkles in a hoar-frost bright,...

Love conquers, deceitful and slow,
With a soft amateurish refrain.
So strange to think – not long ago
You weren’t dejected and gray.
In the garden, at home, in the field,
Whenever she flashed her smile,...