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,...

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...

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...

In the heart, the memory of the sun fades,
Yellower turns the grass.
The wind disperses the early flakes
Barely, with each pass.
In narrow channels, water won’t flow –
Cooling, stands still....

How helplessly chilled was my chest, yet
My footsteps were nimble and light.
I unconsciously put on my left hand
The glove that belonged on my right.
It seemed that the stairs were endless,...

The boy there, on the bagpipes playing,
The girl, who weaves herself a wreath,
Two forest paths that cross while straying,
The fire in the fields beneath -
I see it all. I witness it and stow...

And the stone word fell
On my still-living breast.
Never mind, I was ready.
I will manage somehow.

Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,...

There will be thunder then. Remember me.
Say ' She asked for storms.' The entire
world will turn the colour of crimson stone,
and your heart, as then, will turn to fire.
...

Twenty-first. Night. Monday.
Silhouette of the capitol in darkness.
Some good-for-nothing -- who knows why--
made up the tale that love exists on earth.

People believe it, maybe from laziness...

Why is this age worse than earlier ages?
In a stupor of grief and dread
have we not fingered the foulest wounds
and left them unhealed by our hands?

In the west the falling light still glows,...

You thought I was that type:
That you could forget me,
And that I'd plead and weep
And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,

Or that I'd ask the sorcerers...

You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
...