ЖИЗНЬ ПРЕКРАСНА


   Sometimes she weeps and sometimes she is angry. 
   She wears modish dresses and very cozy shoos. 
   And in the mirror checks the long-acquainted sentry, 
   So rare to indulge, so often to accuse. 
   
   She makes her face, of course, and she still dyes her hair. 
   And life is good. But rusty hue turns brighter every year. 
   
   She loves her cat and Blacky pays her ditto. 
   Complains of nobody to whom she'd like to talk. 
   And likes to mention age her relatives had lived to, 
   And it's for their help to cemetery's her walk. 
   
   And maybe they do help, and she does not surrender. 
   And life is good. But old roles seem difficult to render. 
   
   The 15-th June and it's her birthday party. 
   She takes her glass with smile, a girl, a bride, a wife. 
   And says with a queer sound, an intake breathable hardly, 
   "Let it be seventy... Well, it was still a life." 
   
   Though all is past, the future's not all hollow. 
   And life is good. But don't cry. You know I will follow. 
   
   She is my mother.



               ***********



      ТАК, НОЧЬ ЕЩЕ...


  So still is night... The village sleeps already. 
  A broken bottle is shining on the dam. 
  The willow stoops - a grizzled old lady. 
  The moon is ewe, the cloud - fleecy lamb. 
   
   
  So deep are shadows... Only rippling water 
  Like voice of angel sitting on my knee... 
  It used to be. My little drowned daughter, 
  Tell me, my friend, why you are not with me.


                ***********



                     Я ЖДУ ПРОХЛАДЫ СЕНТЯБРЯ



I wait for coolness of September
That overnight the wind will bring to us. 
And we shall see the sky, the sunlight amber
As if the dust was washed from window-glass.


I wait for coolness of September, 
For sheer joy that will at last unite
My tired mind and every body member, 
Past dreamy day and future sleepless night.


I wait for coolness of September
To feel again that I am in for life,
Eternal wisdom, calm, and childish temper,
When trees are big and I am only five.



                 ***********



                Я НЕ ЖДУ ПРОХЛАДЫ СЕНТЯБРЯ



I don't wait for coolness of September.
For what on earth have I to wait it for?
As if I were a dull degraded gambler
Who takes his card despite his loss before?!


I don't wait for coolness of September,
The liar-month that cheated me of youth.
White girlish bows, friendship, I remember,
Turn insincere flowers and abuse.

  
I don't wait for coolness of September.
The time has come for me to warm and sober.
I don't wait for coolness of September
Because I wait for coolness of October. 


                ***********


             ГАМЛЕТ


   I'm stunned, I'm stupid. Stupefied. 
   Futility of future 
  -- what's more needed 
   To understand one's smallness and one's lie? 
   The lie by nobody heeded. 
   
   The insect squashed between my fingers - 
   am I not the same? 
   To whom'd I pray, and how, and what about? 
   The graveyard moss, the rotten bones - insane 
   But only truth. Ill logic paramount. 
   
   By day the world is flat, by night it's full of death. 
   By daytime death. And fake - 
   as if I'm not alone. 
   My sins, my feelings, people who I'm to guess 
   But know not. And death in all again - like tinge, like drone. 
   
   If such is life - what is the sense to live? 
   For fear only? 
   Well---there are sometimes 
   The beauty, elevation... Well. But if we have to leave 
   All this - than better look at it with open eyes. 
   
   To be? Oh, not to be!



                ***********


             ОТВЕТ МИЛОМУ ДРУГУ НА УПРЕКИ В НЕБЛАГОРАЗУМИИ ИЛИ УМ ЗА РАЗУМ (ПОД К.П.)


   What can be reasonable in the world 
   Which you must die in? 
   And is that blob - your stronghold? 
   Come, don't be silly, darling!



                ***********



              МОГИЛЬНЫЙ ЧЕРВЯЧОК


   I've had a dream. In it my sight acquired 
   a queer property of penetrating soil 
   Or maybe it was soil became pellucid. 
   Or better yet. I was myself a worm 
   Or something like. I felt in every coil 
   Affinity to place where I was born. 
   
   Another world. A huge amount 
   of roots. And which is which? 
   Entangled, intertwined more tightly, more expansive 
   than in the upper world. And each 
   Connected in the furtive struggle 
   For soil and, may be... soul. 
   
   Are not we all like that? 
   You see yourself as separate, as something different, as "myself". 
   But have the common flesh, and dust, and graveyard worm.



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