POETRY
Mikhail Lermontov translated by Lana Mosesova
BORING AND SAD And boring and sad and no one to give hand to In a minute of soul affliction... Whishes!�. what good is vain and eternal whish? But years go by � all the best years! To love�. But whom? For a time � doesn�t worth the work But to love forever impossible To look in side your self ?- there is no shadow of the past And happiness and harassment and everything there, Nothingness� Passion? Indeed early on or later its sweet ailment Will vanish with words of wisdom And life, as look with cold attention around Such an empty and foolish joke.
MIKHAIL LERMONTOV (Born 1814, Died 1841) (Translations from Russian)
I want to live; I crave for sadness - Against my bliss and love, in truth; They sank my mind in idle gladness And made my brow very smooth. It's time for high life's derogation To blow away the hazy peace; What is bard's life, void of desolation? And what are void of tempests seas? He wants a life that burns and wounds, The life in which it's hard to be. He buys the Holly Heaven's sounds, He doesn't take his fame for free.
I love my land, but with a queer passion, My mind isn't able to absorb it, yet! Nor glory, purchased by the bloody actions, Nor peace, in proud confidence inlaid, Nor sacred sagas of the days of yore Will stir my pleasant fancies any more. But I do love - and I don't know why - Her endless plains' indifference and silence, Her endless forests' ever swaying wildness, Her rivers' floods which, like the sea, are wide. I love to gallop in a cart on roads, And peering slowly through darkness of the nights, And idly dreaming of the night abodes, To meet the solemn hamlets' twinkling lights. I love the smell of the burnt-out stubble, The wagons, sleeping in the steppe, And gleaming of the birches' marble, Midst cornfields on the hillocks' steps. And with a joy, that's little known, I see a full and stout barn, A cottage covered with straw, And shutters that are fairly done. And in the holly dewy evening, I'm glad to watch until midnight, The dances, filled with stamps and whistling, To murmur of the peasants, tight.
Page 2
Home
