Nikolay Gumilev

My dear friend, and I have tried to find
My paradise in serfdom of a soul,
I liked them all – the odd ways of a mind 
Without hopes, or memories, or goals.

Promptly to glide along the brooks of lines,
To enter into straits of chapters, slow,
To watch a foam on the flows’ spines,
And listen to a tide’s increasing roar!

But at the night, oh, how fast they gloom – 
The shades behind the images and drawers,
The pendulum, immobile, like the moon,
That o’er the glimm’ring quagmire hovers!          


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, May, 2000
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, December, 2000