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From “Remembrance” by Nikolai Gumilev 🇷🇺 (15 Apr 1886 – 26 Aug 1921)
Translated from the Russian by Yevgeny Bonver
Only serpents let their skin be fallen
And a soul—all grown up and old.
We, alas, change an eternal soul,
Leaving body in eternal hold.
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Oh, remembrance, power, she-giant,
You direct a horse-life with a bridle,
You will tell me all these men about,
Who had had my body before I’d.
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The first one was ugly, thin and tragic,
Loving darkness of the garden lane,
Falling Leaf, the child of gloomy magic,
Whose one word could fully stop the rain.
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Second one—he liked the wind from South,
Every noise for him was strings’ accord,
He believed that life is just his spouse,
And the rag under his feet—the world.
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I don’t like him: in his mind, he’s roused,
To the crowns of the King and God,
He had hanged on entrance to my house
The signboard with a script “The Bard.”
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I do like the favorite of freedom,
Him, who used to sail in sea and shoot:
What a song he heard in water’s kingdom,
What a cloud followed his routes!
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I’m a builder, which is working smartly
O’er the temple, arising in a haze,
Seek for fame for my beloved country
As in Heavens, so on the earth.
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Heart is scorched by non-extinguished fire,
Till the day, in which, as made of light,
Walls of New Jerusalem will spire
On the fields of my beloved land.
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Then the queer wind will start to blow,
And the awful light will pour on us,
It’s the Milky Way—begins to grow
As a garden of the dazzling stars.
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And the tiered stranger will appear,
Hiding face, but I will catch his dream,
Looking at a lion, going near,
And an eagle, flying straight to him.
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I will scream, but who will hear my groan,
Who will save my soul from a crash?
Only snakes could let their skin be fallen,
People lose the soul—not the flesh.