If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.

If someone someday in this country Decides to raise a memorial to me, I give my consent to this festivity But only on this condition – do not build it By the sea where I...

Flowers, cold from the dew,And autumn’s approaching breath,I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids,Which haven’t faded yet.In their nights, fragrantly resinous,Entwined with delightful mystery,They will breathe in her springlikeExtraordinary beauty.But in a whirlwind of sound...

I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again.

No foreign sky protected me, no stranger’s wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot survivor of that time, that place.

Let my heiress have full rights,Live in my house, sing songs that I composed.Yet how slowly my strength ebbs,How the tortured breast craves air.The love of my friends, my enemies’ rancorAnd the yellow roses in...

Forgive me that I felt forsaken, That grief and angst was all I knew. Forgive me that I kept mistaking Too many other men for you.

Though you are three times more beautiful than angels,Though you are the sister of the river willows,I will kill you with my singing,Without spilling your blood on the ground.Not touching you with my hand,Not giving...

I’ve ceased to smile long ago, The bitter winds now chill my lips, Another hope was just let go, Another song was added since. Against my will, I’ll cede this song To people’s laughter and...

This land, although not my native land,Will be remembered forever.And the sea’s lightly iced,Unsalty water.The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk,The air is heady, like wine,And the rosy body of the pinesIs naked...

Let whoever wants to, relax in the south,And bask in the garden of paradise.Here is the essence of north and it’s autumnI’ve chosen as this year’s friend.

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

We don’t know how to say goodbye,We wander on, shoulder to shoulderAlready the sun is going downYou’re moody, and I am your shadow.Let’s step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the deadWhy are we...

I seem to myself, as in a dream,An accidental guest in this dreadful body.

As the future ripens in the past,so the past rots in the future –a terrible festival of dead leaves.

It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.

No one else was as close and as open, No one else so boiled my blood, Even he, who consigned me to torment, Even he, who caressed and forgot.

This cruel age has deflected me,like a river from this course.Strayed from its familiar shores,my changeling life has flowedinto a sister channel.How many spectacles I’ve missed:the curtain rising without me,and falling too. How many friendsI...

Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children’s children, pure on their tongues, and free.

Beyond the lake the waning moon has slowed,And stands there like a window open wideInto a hushed and brightly lit abodeWhere something dreadful has occurred inside.

I’m happy. But some beauty is nonesuch – The gently sloping path across the wood, The wretched bridge that’s just a little skewed And that, for which, I won’t be waiting much.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, Who suffered death because she chose to turn.

And you know, I agree to everything:I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy,Darkness will be light and sin lovely.

My shadow serves as the friend I crave.

All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death’s wing flashed ahead.

Song falls silent, music is dumb,But the air burns with their fragrance,And white winter, on its knees,Observes everything with reverent attention.

All my contemporaries—hundred-and-fivers or convicts—will tell you how we livedin barely sentient fear, raisingchildren for the executioner,prison, or the torture chamber.

I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed… here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.

Why is it that you still beguile me –As wind, stone, bird – and all the likes? Why is that you smile on me – With sudden summer lightning strikes?

I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation....

If someone someday in this countryDecides to raise a memorial to me,I give my consent to this festivityBut only on this condition – do not build itBy the sea where I was born,I have severed...