Bella Akhmadulina

No word about love! But I’m mute it about –
My larynx, long ago, had lost its nightingales.
There’re just the fire flames with empty skies around,
No word about love – e’en if the moonlight reigns.

I’ve used to keep the moon o’er my head till the morning –
To bear my nightly toils, to wake my deepest thought,
But this moonlight looks for the end of all adoring,
And our Arbat is spread into a white dunes’ lot.

She’s prattling about love – my sister poet-singer –
I’d look at her just once and only slightly grin.
How neatly it is built with the moonlight’s blocks, ringing – 
The crystal god’s abode with doors inviting in.

How Gogol’s poor and thin, (there - at the boulevard’s casting),
And how lone seem in front of the cold world.
There ne’er was such a moon, for nights, in the past lasting;
Just now it will pass by. About love – no word!

So long I’d lived alone, that my heart turned impassive,
But it again got life in fighting with my fate,
And it is filled again by someone’s might and mercy.
And are we those two under the moonlight’s fret?


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, January 7, 2005