"Osip Mandelstam. Tristia (tranlsation by Ilya Shambat) (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Upon the neck is hanging
A colored sash.

He curses, mutters, mumbles
Words lost within;
He wants to make confession
But first to sin.

A disappointed worker
A bitter one
The eye, beat up in melee,
Shines like the sun.

Thus having followed Sabbath,
He drags his feet:
Happy privation stares
From every street.

At home, flying with curse words
And white with rage,
A harsh wife meets and screams at
The drunken sage.



x x x

Above the federal buildings' yellow gown
A hazy flurry circles far and wide
Within the sled the coachman sits down
And with broad gesture hides his coat inside.

Ships fall asleep. And in the evening, rocking,
Thick cabin windows fill to brim with light.
And monstrously -- just like a fortress docking --
Russia is breathing heavily at night.

On the Nieva stand hundred embassies;
Admiralty, the sun, and silence glare.
The state's tight shackle harshly on us sits,
Poor like an uncouth bodice made of hair.

Hard is the journey of the Northern snob -
Eugene Onegin's well-clichи'd despair;
On Senate square are mounds of fallen snow
A bonfire's smoke, and chill of steel made bare.

The ducks are sipping water, and the gulls
In waving folds of sea are gently lurking
Where, selling lumps of beef or tender rolls,