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Translations
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from Russian poetry

by Alexander Pushkin

On hills of Georgia is lying dark of night,
Aragva’s splash beside my feet is.
I’m sorrowful and free, melancholy is light ,
It’s full of you, your tender features,

You, only you alone... My damp increases force,
And nothing tortoises and cools it.
Heart’s firing again and loves again, because
To live without love it couldn’t.

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1799 - 1837

by Michael Lermontov

I’m sad, because I love you, poor thing,
And know, what can crowd’s rumour bring.
They won’t spare your rosy youth with their meannes.
For every lighten day, for every happy minute
The fate will make with pain and tears pay.
And I’m sad... because you are too gay.

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1814 - 1841

SILENCIUM
by O.Mandelshtam

She’s yet not born in being hive,
She’s word, and music, and abstraction,
And so it can be a connection
unbreakable of all alive.

Sea’s bossom calmly breaking goes,
The day is light, just like insane,
And lilac foam, pale like pain,
In black and azure vessel grows.

My lips are craving, by the oath,
For pristine dumbness, hiding coat,
For pure, crystal spelling note,
Which’s so clear since it birth!

O Aphrodite, again be foam,
O word, return to music, shut.
O heart, you be ashamed of heart,
With source of life be common home!

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1891 -- 1938

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by O.Mandelshtam

I’ve never heard romantic Osian’s stories,
I’ve never tasted viscous ancient vine;
But Scotland grade in vision seems and worries,
And bloody moon, and song of auld lang syne.

I dream that harp calls over a raven
In ominous and silent dark of moon;
And scarves of knights are gleaming in the heaven,
And everything is pale under the moon!

O, it’s my blessed inheritance, my quarry,
Strange singer’s wandering and misty dreams;
Relationship and neighborhood are boring,
We can despise these dull and fruitless themes.

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WINTER
by Boris Pasternak

I’m sticking my cheek to a winter,
Snow screw, curling spiral like snail.
«You are out of game, you are into!»
Trouble bustle, and rustle, and fail.

«We shall play ‘Sea is waving’? The story,
Which is curling in space like a twist?
Taking turn, be it pretty or horrid?
Playing life, just as places your list?

Play your laugh, play your play, play your craving,
Play in hurry, and suddenly stay?
And the sea? Is it really waving,
And calm down, not asking of day?

Is it drone of shell? Breath of sorry?
Giggling chatter of smattering rooms?
Or the fire with shadow quarrels,
Crashes with stove lid and terribly glooms?

Sighs of vents go up and approach,
Look about, and burst into tears,
Biting trough with a black snore of coach,
Dashing driver in white cloud streams.

Drift of snow, unweeded, on level
With a window, grows like tree.
Over glasses with vitriol never
Something was. Isn’t able to be.

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1890 -- 1960