I don't pity, don't call, don't cry...
Translated by Lyuba Coffey

I don't pity, don't call, don't cry,
All will be gone, like haze from the white apple trees.
Seized by the gold of withering,
I will never be young again.

My heart touched by the chill within,
You will not beat as before,
And the cotton birches of the countryside
No more will lure me to gad about barefoot.

Wandering spirit! Less and less
Do you stir the flame of my lips.
Oh, gone, my freshness,
Stormy eyes, high water of feelings.

Now, I've become tame in my wishes,
Life of mine? Did you come in dreams to me?
As if at an echo-filled early Spring hour
I rode by on a rose-colored stallion.

We all, we all decay in this world,
The copper flows quietly from the maple trees.
Let it be in centuries blessed,
That it happened to me to bloom and die.

1921

One joy I have left...
Translated by Lyuba Coffey

One joy I have left:
My fingers in my mouth -- and a merry whistle.
Infamy has come to me,
That I am an abuser and scandalmonger.

Ah! What an amusing loss!
There are many amusing losses in life.
I am ashamed, that I did not believe in God.
It is a pain, that I still do not believe.

Golden, faraway spaces!
Everyday routine burns everything.
I was both obscene and vulgar
For burning brighter.

A poet's gift is to caress and spoil,
There is destiny's seal upon him.
On earth, I wanted to marry
A white rose with a black toad.

1923

A Letter to Mother
Translated by Lyuba Coffey

Are you still alive, my old woman?
So am I. Hello to you, hello!
Let this unearthly evening light flow
Over your old home.

They write to me that you conceal your anxiety,
Having become very sad about me,
That you often go out on the road
In an old fashioned threadbare shushun.

In the blue evening darkness
It seems to you, always the same,
As if someone brawling in the kabok
Stabbed me in the heart with a Finnish knife.

That's alright my dear! Calm down.
It's only a terrible nightmare.
I'm not yet that much a drunkard,
As to die not having seen you.

I'm still as tender as before
And I dream only of
Coming back to our little house
Forced by rebellious melancholy.

I'll be back when our white garden
Spreads out its branches again.
But don't rouse me at dawn
As you did eight years ago.

Don't wake up that, which has been dreamt of,
Don't excite that, which hasn't come true,--
In life I've had to experience
Too early a loss and fatigue.

And don't teach me to pray. You shouldn't!
There's no way back to the past.
You are my only hope and joy
You are my only untold light.

So forget about your anxiety,
Don't be so blue about me.
Don't go out upon the road
In you old fashioned threadbare shushun.

1924

The golden grove has ceased to speak...
Translated by Dimitri Obolensky/Adapted by Michael Coffey

The golden grove has ceased to speak
In the joyous language of birches,
And the cranes, sad in their flying past,
No longer regret anyone.

Who's there to regret? Is not every man in this world a wanderer?
He passes by, visits, and again departs the house.
The broad moon over the pale blue pond,
Together with the hemp-field, dream of all who have departed.

Alone, I am standing in the bare plain,
While the cranes are carried far away by the wind;
I am full of thoughts about my joyous youth,
But I regret nothing from the past.

I do not regret the years squandered in vain,
I do not regret the lilac blossom within my soul.
In the garden, a fire of rowan-berries is burning,
But it cannot warm anyone.

The rowan berries, in clusters, will not be scorched,
The grass will not grow yellow and perish.
As the tree gently lets fall its leaves,
So I let fall melancholy words.

And if time, after scattering them in the wind,
Should rake them together into a futile heap...
You'd just say that the golden grove
Has ceased to speak in the language I love.

1924

Son of a Bitch
Translated by Lyuba Coffey

Once more the years fly out of the shadows
And like meadows of daisies they are rustling.
I dreamt today of my dog,
That was my friend in youth.

Now my youth has roared out,
Like out the rotten maple beneath my window,
But I still remember the girl in white,
For whom the dog was a postman.

Not everyone has his own soulmate,
But she was like a song to me,
Because she never took from the dog's collar
Any of the notes I wrote her.

Never did she read them,
My writing was not familiar to her,
But she lingered long dreaming of something,
By the snowball bush behind the yellow pond.

I suffered... I wanted an answer...
I never got any... I left... And now
Across the years... as a famous poet
I am here again, at my home gates.

That dog died long ago,
But with the same coat, that bluish tinge,
With crazy barking, merrily,
Her son met me today.

Oh mother! How alike they are!
Again, the soul's pain emmanates.
With this pain I'm feeling younger,
And can write messages again.

I'm happy to listen to an old song,
But don't you bark! Don't! Don't!
Dog, would you like me to kiss you
For the May you awakened in my heart?

I will kiss you, cling to you with my body
And like a good friend invite you into my house...
Yes, I did like the girl in white,
But now I love the one in blue.

1924

The unspoken, blue, tender...
Translated by Lyuba Coffey

The unspoken, blue, tender...
My land is calm after the storms, the lightening,
And my soul -- a vaste field --
Is breathing in the aroma of honey and roses.

I've become placid. The years have done their work,
But I am not cursing what has passed.
Like three wild horses
that have traveled the whole country.

Horseshoed. They kicked up dust everywhere.
And disappeared with a hellish whistle.
And now here in the wooden hermitage
You can even hear a leaf falling.

Is it a bluebell? Or is it a distant echo?
My lungs are inhaling everything in quietly.
Stop, soul, you and I have by
This way stormily.

We'll sort everything out that we saw,
What happened, what happened to the country,
And we'll forgive where we were hurt bitterly
Whether by others or ourselves.

I accept what was and what wasn't,
But it's a pity in my thirtieth year --
That I demanded too little in my youth,
Losing myself in the haze of the kabak.

But the young oak, not having born acorns,
Bends like grass in the field...
Hey, you, my stormy youth,
Golden hothead!

1925

I haven't seen such beauty...
Translated by Lyuba Coffey

I haven't seen such beauty,
But you know, I'll hide in my soul
Not in bed but in rightful offense
You are reliving my youth.

You -- my cornflower word
I love you forever.
How does our cow live now,
Pulling at the straw cornflower?

You'll begin singing and I love it,
Cure me with a child's dream.
Has our mountain ash burnt away,
It's blossoms falling under the white window?

What is mother singing now while spinning?
I left the village forever,
But I know -- with a scarlet storm
Our porch will be covered with leaves.

I know that, in regards us together,
In place of caresses, instead of tears
The abandoned dog is quietly moaning
By the gates, like a spoiled bride.

But still there's no need to be back,
That's why, belatedly, I recalled,
Like love, like sadness and relief,
Your beautiful Ryazan kerchief.

13 September 1925

Do you hear -- dashing sledges...
Translated by Lyuba Coffey

Do you hear -- dashing sledges, do you hear sledges dashing.
It's good with a sweet love in the field to be disappearing.

The cheery wind is shy and modest,
Along the stark plain, the bell is jingling.

Oh you, sledges, sledges! Horse -- you are my light bay!
Somewhere in the meadow the maple dances drunk.

We'll drive up to it, we'll ask -- what's this?
And together we three will dance to the talyanka.

3 October 1925

Crying snowstorm, like a gypsy's violin
Translated by Lyuba Coffey

Crying snowstorm, like a gypsy's violin.
Darling girl, evil smile,
Am I not coy from your blue glance?
Much I do not desire, much I do not require.
So apart we are and so not alike --
You young, and I lived everything.
To youths happiness, and for me just memories
On this snowy night in a wild snowstorm.

I'm not consumed by caresses -- the snowstorm is my violin.
Your smile is snowing my heart

4/5 October 1925

Snowy plain, white moon
Translated by Lyuba Coffey

Snowy plain, white moon,
Our land is covered with a shroud.
And the birches cloaked in white cry for the forests.
Who perished here? Died? Wasn't it I myself?

4/5 October 1925

You my maple bare, maple frosted
Translated by Lyuba Coffey

You my maple bare, maple frosted,
Why are you here bent under the snowstorm white?

Or do you see something? Or do you hear?
As if behind the village you've come for a walk.

And like a drunk watchman, you've come on the road,
Suffocated in the snowdrift, your leg frozen.

Ah, and nowadays I myself am quite unsteady
Can't walk home after a friendly drinking session.

There did I see a pussy willow, over there a pine,
And by the snowstorm sang them songs about summer.

To myself I seemed the same maple,
Only not the bare one, but green with might and main.

And lost my modesty, fooled totally,
Like somebody's wife did I embrace a birch.

28 November 1925

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
Translated by Lyuba Coffey

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye.
My darling, you are in my heart.
The appointed parting
Promises a meeting ahead.

Goodbye, my friend, without hand, without word,
Don't be sad and don't upset your brows, --
In this life to die is not new,
But to live, of course, is not newer.

1925