The moon
The moon
Again, in the window you see,
When looking up to the glow,
The death-mask of the day
Hanging there on a black wall.
Distiches
Love
On a mountain in ancient years
Poets created it themselves.
Inseparable love
A leaf pressed for a moment against cold glass
It thought to hide from cold this way forever
Candle-end
Why do you keep a burned-out candle?
Why do you need a shapeless candle-end?
How useless it is! How ugly and spent!
Why do you keep a burned-out candle?
Why do I keep a burned-out candle?
It will shine no more, nor keep me warm.
The sole sister of a heart left worn.
That’s why I keep a burned-out candle.
***
No, not seeking for a thrill
of thoughtless sensual caresses.
What does my pleasing
make you feel like doing?
I seek for lulling thirst of new
сoncerns of soul, delights
agreed in acts, agreed in words,
and in the arms and kisses of those,
Where for the innocence of the bashful
There’s no resentment and no shame
The bliss is not supressed, not ever
With a discretion full of fear
In you, not in nature, I put my trust.
Will I ever by this find happiness?
If I don’t praise it like a god,
Then should I make a sacrifice?
Passage
.. Ah, those rhymes, rhymes of mischief!
Just try to keep them in check.
They are like leashless fillies
Desire to gallop everywhere.
Look: the one is tearing a bit another.
And in a scope by playing,
Mischiefs are calling others
To tear the bits and make it happen
But there’s no need, we let it go.
However, foolishness can judge,
Let a poetic force carry
Them off their feet to newer place.
Tell me, is anything for poet
More dear then a place on shore?
And what can be as precious
As the freedom can be for him.
The minute of a willful inspiration,
And stanza where the poet’s blissed?
Who’s happy here? He is happy: he’s a poet.
But writes again: “no happiness exists”.
Of whom does he dream and long for?
He laughs with bitter, grumbles and being angry.
To penalty the fate and to reproach with Heaven
He’s wasting fervor of his feelings, thoughts.
Which author wasn’t happy with himself?
Yet the great creator* was so right:
“No muse, no work, no joy of leisure –
There’s nothing to replace my only friend”.
***
Are you surprised how easy and light-hearted
I listen to your confession again?
That to your endless mischiefs
So little I attach importance.
These, Don Juan, will be as they were,
I will not call them treason.
Am I to blame you for such loving ardor?
I, even I, Carmen.
***
Do not look for happiness overseas.
Do not worry on alighting the ship
And to fly to it under the sails.
There, same as here, it doesn’t exist.
Packing is trouble without reason or need.
Not for better, it’s a knowledgeable way.
Foreign shore is always foreign
There your soul won’t find rest.
Or it should be tired to death.
From offence, from despair, from grief
Where in the air is a poisonous scent,
All the land is covered with quicksand.
With dream in harmony, a hope predicts
It will be otherwise for you. Rubbish!
For you, alas! All things will be the same
As things had happened way before.
For there is no another outcome
Of seeking. It good that shores of Earth
Are parted by the water body.
Everything is fine from afar.
To God with useless prayers
Do not bother taking knife of fate.
Do not look for happiness overseas –
There same as here it doesn’t exist.
*Great creator — Alexander Pushkin. Author’s note.
About the author:
Vera Kolomeitseva-Fironty was born in Moscow to a family of intellectuals in the Soviet era. She graduated with honors from the Faculty of Russian Philology of Moscow State Pedagogical University. She worked as a translator in Russia and Italy and began writing in adolescence. In 1998, her first book of poems was published. In 2015, a corrected version was republished with the title «Winter Festival.»
