"We Don't Know How to Say Goodbye:"

We do not know how to say goodbye:
We wander on, shoulder, to shoulder.
Already the sun is going down;
You are moody, I am in your shadow.

Let us walk into a church :
Baptisms, marriages, masses for the dead we observe,
Then leave side by side.
Why are we any different from the rest?

Or else let us sit in the graveyard
On the trampled snow, sighing to each other.
You are drawing palaces
In which we shall always be together.


"A Widow in Black..."

A widow in black -the crying call
Covers all hearts with a dismal cloud...
While her man's words are clearly recalled,
She will not stop her lamentations aloud.
It will be so, until the snow fluries
Will give mercy to the pined and tired.
Forgetfulness of suffering and love --
Though paid by life-what more could be desired?


The Last Toast

I drink to our demolished house,
To the wickedness in my life,
To our loneliness together,
I raise my glass to you--
To those lying lips which have betrayed me,
And to the dead-cold eyes
The coarse, brutal world and the fact
That God has not saved us.


In Dreams

Black and enduring separation
I share equally with you.
Why weep? Give me your hand,
Promise me you will come again.
You and I are like towering
Mountains and we can't move closer.
Just send me a declaration
At midnight sometime through the stars.


"Three Things Captivated Him:"

Three things captivated him:
Evensong, white peacocks,
And old, faded maps of the Americas.
He desipsed it when children wrestled,
He despised rasberry jam with his tea,
And the hystarias of women.
:But I was his wife, bound to him.


"And You, My Friends Who Have Been Called Away:"

And you, my friends who have been called away,
I have been spared to mourn for you and weep,
Not as a frozen willow over your memory,
But to cry to the world the names of those who sleep.
What names are those!
I slam shut the book of names,
Down on your knees, all!
Blood of my heart,
The people of Leningrad march out in even rows,
The living, the dead : fame cannot tell them apart.

translated from Russian by Nikola, 2001

Russian Gothic Project