INNOKENTY ANNENSKY: You're Again With Me

You're Again With Me

You're again with me, my girlfriend autumn?
But through your net of the boughs bared,
Bluish tints were ne’er such pale and frozen,
And I don’t recall the snow more dead.

I’ve not seen some sadder than your rabble,
And such black as all your lakes and streams,
In your skies – old, faded and unstable –
Yellow clouds of my painful dreams.

Just to see this all, while fully freezing…
How strangely new is this air cold…
Do you know, I thought, more dizzying             
Is to see the empty deeps of words.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, February, 2001