Dedicated to N.P.P. 

I’m drunk on your wild caresses,

You’ve driven me crazy for you…

Just tell me I’ve only been dreaming

So I can believe that it’s true.

No, you want to torment me forever –

Why shouldn’t you play and have fun;

And smiling, you answer, carefreely,

“We won’t do again what we’ve done.”

29 August 1902

Rostov-on-Don

(Juvenilia) 

Dedicated to N.P.P.

Love’s gone… the tuberoses have expired,

You have become cold as ice.

To see tears, my tears, that’s your desire,

But pride will never let me cry.

In nightime silence, utterly exhausted,

Suffering and loving endlessly

I curse the day of our first meeting

And sob for what you’ve done to me.

But I won’t cry when you are with me.

So there! Insult me, beat me and torment,

Just hint that I may get a chance to see you,

And if you want to, torture me again.

The way you play upon my heartstrings,

Sometimes it seems no pity in your dwells;

But you give all of paradise’s raptures

While with your hand you push me into hell!

29 August 1902

Rostov-on-Don

(Juvenilia - 31) 

 Dedicated to N.P.P.

The colder the letters you write,

The longer the silence between them,

The harder the waiting becomes,

The more I’m tormented with love!

The more I give pain to myself,

I want not to think and I suffer,

I want to forget and remember

That marvellous smile of yours!

Your image arises before me…

It makes me recall your caresses,

It rouses the passion inside me,

And I’m more tormented with love.

25 March 1903

(Juvenilia - 42) 

That evening was dimly smoldering –

But for me it was a fiery one.

On that evening, as you had been hankering,

We went out to the “Union”.

I remember your hands, weak from happiness,

The veins – networks of navy blue.

And my touching your hand was impossible,

Both were covered in gloves by you.

Ah, again you approached so close by to me,

And again you turned to the side!

It was clear to me: words were infindable,

Irregardless of how I tried.

And I said: “Your eyes in the gloominess

Are deep brown and look remote…”

As a waltz played, we watched scenes of Switzerland –

In the mountains a tourist, a goat.

Then I smiled – you didn’t respond to me…

Don’t we all think that we’re the aggrieved!

And so lightly that you wouldn’t notice it,

I carressingly smoothed your sleeve.

January (?) February (?) 1915

A greedy spirit could not conquer

Your self-betraying thought’s caprice –

And so, from thousands up to hire,

One night was given by you to me.

You had tutored by dispassion

A brilliant artistry in love.

But suddenly, tough used to quarry,

Your arms, embracing me, convulsed.

Your eyes are frantic, stung by yearning,

Your mouth is grim, clenched jealously,

You’re paying fate back for my tardy

Arrival by tormenting me.

(1916)

 Not satiation, not desire

Your languorousness bring to mind.

To all your speech and gaze are kind,

No one and everyone’s my rival.

But to delights that are mere wishes

How can dreams not betray me, when

You say not to, not yes, but then,

Your eyes imprint my mouth with kisses?

O, arms affectionate and prudent,

How you protect your indolence…

But shadows under your eyes grow dense:

‘Twill be, the hour of love’s torment!

Alchaen Stanzas

And truly handsome. Shapely young man, are you:

Beneath the eyelashes’ fringe two dark-blue suns,

and curls, a darkly streaming whirlwind

grander than laurel, crown your soft features.

A real Adonis, young precursor of mine!

You began the cup which is now passed to me –

Pressing the lips of my beloved,

With a doleful thought myself I comfort:

Not you, oh young man, unbound the spell on her.

Marveling at the flame of her loving lips,

Oh, first one, not your enviously,

My name shall a lover murmur, praying. 

3 October 1915

All of me is twined in memories’ rapture,

I say, as from happiness I weaken:

“Lesbos! Source of lyric poetry

at the last of Orpheu’s harbors!”

Avid was my soul with wondrous avarice,

to the muses we did not give leisure.

In that country I was not alone,

Oh, my splendid woman-friend and lover!

Underneath my hand, which was not at full strength,

You forgave the unfull sound of the lyre,

You. Whose languid name inside of me,

Like the moon, draws waves upon the shoreline.

(1922)

July 30th

As cold is bitter, heat can be intense.

There is a parable about this day:

the witches milk dry all the cows

and milk-intoxicated, faint away…

The rain has stopped, but left the earth unslaked

- What drops are these? She deserves a drink!

The distance streams, all molten with the heat,

and earth has gone all cracks and crevices…

On such a day, a long, long time ago,

to cicadas’ crackling, chirring tremolo,

now falling back, now on her elbows raising

herself again, her fingernails dug in

her palms, biting her mouth until it bled,

plaintively and ardently a mother did

her female deed, the vein beneath the hollow

of her temple beat, beat under cooled sweat.

Her depths cracked, like earth from the heat,

cicadas seemed to crackle in her ears –

and on that day of drunken witches’ rapture

to me, the newborn girl, was given a sacred,

the most sacred of all names – SOPHIA:

may my wildness be overcome by me, and

may I carry heavenly beauty high

past evil’s whirlwinds, like a Passion light.

1922

Kitchen Garden

The greedy saline soil had eaten everything.

I rooted out the twisted, writhen roots of

the vines that curled here once upon a time. –

The earth was nubbly, desiccated, scabby,

like a feverish sick woman’s lips…

Beneath its lacerated sole my foot

grew callouses from leaning on the shovel,

my hands were swelling with a painful fire,

as iron would collide with buried skulls.

She put up quite a fight against me with

a kind of atavistic vengefulness, but I

went at her with my pick – like so, like so,

I will outstubborn your stubbornness!

Hear sprightly peas will soon begin to curl,

the corn will raise its thick stalks skyward,

and elephantine pumpkin, big with child,

will loose her serpent tresses like the Gorgon.

Ah! Neither crocuses nor snowdrops smell

in spring so satisfyingly of spring as

the garden bed’s first-blooming cucumber!...

The sharp fang of my pick shone in the sun,

around me, clumps of earth bobbed up and crumbled,

a sea-breeze blew, the sweat run down my back

and cooled, congealing as a cold slender snake, -

and never had the rapture of possession

burned through me with such cloudless

completeness and such piercing pride…

And in the valley there the almonds fade

and in their place the peach trees start to bloom.

1924

To E. Ya Tarakhovskaya

I dreamt: I’m wandering in the dark,

my eyes have gotten used to darkness.

And then – light. A Caucasian inn.

Guttural chatter. Drunken shouting.

I enter. Sit. And no one at

the neighbouring tables turned to notice.

And old Lezghìn is pouring wine

lethargically from a wine-skin.

Now he directs his gaze at me.

(His pupil, like a cat’s, is narrowed.)

I say to him emphatically:

“Innkeeper! What’ve you go for supper?”

My voice gets louder till I shout,

but, clearly, no one there can hear it:

the old man did not raise his brow, -

he yawned, and went into the kitchen.

I’m scared. And I can’t comprehend:

these people here, with me, around me,

these people – all the young ones – why,

why can’t they hear my urgent outcry?

And why is no one looking at

the bench and table where I’m sitting

as if they’re empty?... I get up,

I wave my arms, begin protesting –

And right away I think: “Well, then?

So I’m invisible, is that it?

As such a woman, where’ll you go?”

And weary, I approach the window…

Before the beak of day there’s such

exalted silence in the mountains!

And a drunk looks through me, out

the window – and he says: “It’s morning!...”

12 May 1927

To Nina Vedeneyeva

It starts tight in with chapter five

(and there must be a hundred twenty) –

their words stop short as if tonguetied,

they have no secret nook or cranny

to hide from fate, or from themselves,

or from the silence that’s ensued, -

and muteness, and their meeting’s well,

five minutes to a rendez-vous!

But then comes – night… And they’re apart,

and in their beds they toss, from yearning,

and burned completely through their hearts

a kiss’s embryonic burning…

Oh, darling! here’s the bookmark where,

right here, the place that I stopped reading,

(I reached my doom with time to spare)

I can’t rereading from the beginning!

Again about how they drank tea,

sat decorously side by side,

exchanged quite accidentally

a glance that’s sort of crazy-eyed…

Come on, together, let us read

a long, long romance slowly-paced.

You want to make a start with me?

But only straight in medias res!

Leer biografía Sofía Parnok