Translation of Poem by Evgeny Evtushenko, Евгений Евтушенко, "Людей неинтересных в мире нет," THE JACKIES AND THE JUNES (ORDINARY PEOPLE)

 

Евгений Евтушенко

(1932-2017)

 

Людей неинтересных в мире нет.

Их судьбы -- как истории планет.

У каждой все особое, свое,

И нет планет, похожих на нее.

 

А если кто-то незаметно жил,

И с этой незаметностью дружил,

Он интересен был среди людей

Самой неинтересностью своей.

 

У каждого -- свой тайный личный мир.

Есть в мире этом самый лучший миг.

Есть в мире этом самый страшный час,

Но это все неведомо для нас.

 

И если умирает человек,

С ним умирает первый его снег,

И первый поцелуй, и первый бой...

Все это забирает он с собой.

 

Да, остаются книги и мосты,

Машины и художников холсты,

Да, многому остаться суждено,

Но что-то ведь уходит все равно!

 

Таков закон безжалостной игры.

Не люди умирают, а миры.

Людей мы помним, грешных и земных.

А что мы знаем, в сущности, о них?

 

Что знаем мы про братьев, про друзей,

Что знаем о единственной своей?

И про отца родного своего

Мы, зная все, не знаем ничего.

 

Уходят люди... Их не возвратить.

Их тайные миры не возродить.

И каждый раз мне хочется опять

От этой невозвратности кричать.

 

1961

 

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Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

The Jackies and the Junes

(Ordinary People)

 

The world’s sorely lacking in dull, boring folks.

In the lives of just folks lie the whole planet’s hopes.

Each of us has something special, one’s ownly,

Our planet’s discrete, blue and green, one and only.

 

And if Jack or June lived a life not remarkable,

And had friends with that same unremarkableness,

In that something she had of rebarbative-dorkable,

People might see something quite notable/markable.

 

Everyone has one’s own personal world.

In that world the best palmprint is perfectly whorled,

Has a moment that’s scary, abounding in fear,

But we keep the fear faraway, nowhere too near. 

 

And if, say, June dies and departs for afar,

With her dies her first snow, her first pickle jar,

Her first kiss and first fight and God knows what else,

She takes all of that with her (including first belch).

 

Yes, could be the albums and pictures remain,

Old cars, say, a portrait that some artist painted;

So that much is still fated to last all the same,

But then, reams of stuff leaves to join angels and sainted!

 

And so go the rules of this pitiless game.

Not folks, but whole worlds die away—what a shame.

We recall people, their sins we condemn,

But what, in reality, know we of them?

 

What do we know of our sisters, our friends,

Of things quite unique to our own odds and ends?

And what of our own dearest papa, our sire?

We know all about him—except what we require.

 

Jacks and Junes go away . . . Gone for good, no return.

Their secrets are ashes in some gruesome urn.

And whenever I think of these non-resurrections,

I feel a strong urge to shriek out my objections.

 

 

List of All Translations of Russian Poetry Posted on Blog

 

Translations of Russian Poetry into English

Posted on Blog, “U.R. Bowie on Russian Literature”

 

[AS OF SEPTEMBER 12, 2023]

 

Anna Akhmatova:

“Vse raskhishcheno, predano, prodano” (“Everything’s plundered, betrayed, in ruin’s jaws”)

“My ne umeem proshchat’sja” (“We don’t know how to say goodbye”)

“A ty dumal ja tozhe takaja” (“So you took me for some kind of wifey lightweight”)

“Ja nauchilas’ prosto, mudro zhit’” (“Now I’ve learned simply and wisely to live”)

“Iul’ 1914” (“July, 1914”)

“Bezhetsk”

 

Innokenty Annensky:

“Posle kontserta” (“After the Concert”)

“Decrescendo”

“Sentjabr’” (“September”)

 

Pavel Antokol’sky:

“Portret Infanty” (“A Portrait of the Infanta”)

 

Edward Asadov:

“Pustye slova” (“Empty Words”)

 

Nikolai Aseev:

“Khor vershin” (“Choirs in the Heights”)

 

Eduard Bagritsky:

“Ja sladko iznemog ot tishiny i snov” (“So sweetly enervated I, by silence and by dreams”)

“Arbuz” (“The Watermelon”)

 

K.D. Balmont:

Translation of Shelly sonnet “Ozymandias” (“Ozimandija”)

 

Evgeny Baratynsky:

“Na chto vy, dni?” (“Whatever is the use of you, O days?”)

 

Aleksandr Blok:

“Susal’nyj angel” (“The Lollypop Angel”)

“Blagoveshchenie” (“Annunziazione”)

“Vse eto bylo, bylo, bylo” (“All that has been has gone, evanished”)

“Ty pomnish’? V nashej bukhte sonnoj” (“The Rainbow Tints (Remember?)”)

“Est’ igra: ostorozhno vojti” (“The Stalking Eye”)

“Khudozhnik” (“The Artist”)

“O doblestjakh, o podvigakh, o slave” (“While that chaste picture frame”)

“Noch’, Ulitsa, Fonar’, Apteka” (“Night. Street. Lamplight. Pharmacy”)

“Devushka pela v tserkovnom khore” (“In the choir of a church a young girl was singing”)

 

Ivan Bunin:

“Odinochestvo” (“Loneliness”)

“Vecher” (“Evening”)

“Mogila v skale” (“The Tomb in the Cliff”)

“Bereg” (“The Far Shore”)

“Noch’ i den’” (“Night and Day”)

“Pamjati” (“In Remembrance”)

“Gal’tsiona” (“Halcyone”)

“Savaof” (“Sabaoth, Lord God of Hosts”)

“Poslednie slezy” (“Belated Tears”)

“Ne vidno ptits. Pokorno chakhnet” (“Birdless”)

“Epitafija” (“Epitaph”)

“S obez’janoj” (“The Monkey Business”)

“Na rasput’e” (“Where Paths Diverge”)

“Skazka o koze” (“The Tale of the Goat”)

“L’et bez konsta. V lesu tuman” (“My Dear Lord God [“Endless rain, and forest fog”])

“Ritm” (“Rhythm”)

“Portret” (“The Portrait”)

“Temdzhid”

“Les shumit nevnjatnym, rovnim shumom” (“An even, hazy hum runs through the glade”)

“Parus” (“The Sail”)

“Shestikrylyj” (“The Six-Winged Seraph”)

“Khudozhnik” (“The Artist”)

“Spokojnyj vzor, podobnyj vzoru lani” (“The tranquil gaze, your eyes so like a doe’s”)

“Val’s” (“The Waltz”)

“Nastanet den’, ischeznu ja” (“The day will come, I’ll disappear”)

 

Boris Chichibabin:

“Menja odolevaet ostroe” (“The Isle of Jumble”)

“I opyat’ – tishina, tishina, tishina” (“Once Again Silence”)

 

Igor Chinnov:

“Disney World”

“Kazhdyj sgniet (i gnienem ochistitsja)” (“Each of us rots, and through rotting is cleansed”)

“Zhil da byl Ivan Ivanych” (“There walked this earth one Clyde B. Wright”)

“Ne kazhetsja li tebe” (“Don’t you feel”)

“Serdtse sozhmetsja, ispugannyj ezhik” (“Our hearts will cower, frightened hedgehogs”)

 

Aleksandr Dol’sky, “Serdtse na trotuare” (“The Mishandled Heart”)

 

Evgeny Evtushenko:

“Smejalis’ Ljudi za Stenoj” (“Laughers in the Room Next Door”)

“Nas v nabitykh tramvajakh boltaet” (“Dispersement”)

“Ljubimaja, spi” (“Sleep, my dear one”)

“Ukhodjat nashi materi ot nas” (“Departing Mothers”)

“Rany” (“Hurt People Hurt People (Wounds)”)

“Ya byl, slovno veter nad morem nichej” (“Somebody’s”)

“So mnoju vot chto proiskhodit” (“Misapprehensions”)

“Tajny” (“Mysteries”)

“Daj Bog” (“God Grant”)

 

Sergei Esenin:

“My teper’ ukhodim ponemnogu” (“One by one we all are now departing”)

 

A.A. Fet:

“Iz poemy ‘Son’” (“From the Long Poem ‘A Dream’”)

“Kak moshki zaroju” (“Wordless”)

“Teplyj veter tikho veet” (“The warm wind wafts on quietly”)

“Kot poet, glaza prishchurit” (“Eyes asquint, the tomcat purrs”)

“Ne vorchi, moj kot murlyka” (“Stop your purring, grumbler cat”)

“Eshe vesny dushistoj nega” (“In rapture steeped, sweet fragrant spring”)

“Burja na nebe vechernem” (“Storm in the sky of the gloaming”)

“Ja prishel k tebe s privetom” (“I come to you at break of day”)

“Kakaja kholodnaja osen’” (“How cold are the woods in the fall”)

“Lastochki” (“Swallows”)

“Byl chudnyj majskij den’ v Moskve” (“A wondrous Moscow day in May”)

“Shopot, robkoe dykhan’e” (“Whispering and Timid Breathing”)

“Tol’ko v mire i est’, chto tenistyj” (“Distinctive on earth of all things that exist”)

“Chuja vnushennyj drugimi otvet” (“Sensing that loved ones have told you, ‘Say no’ [Portents])”

“Babochka” (“Butterfly”)

 

Rasul Gamzatov:

“Zhuravli” (“The Cranes”)

 

Zinaida Gippius:

“Neljubov’” (“Unlove”)

 

Nikolai Gumilyov:

“Muzhik” (“The Muzhik”)

“Shestoe chuvstvo” (“The Sixth Sense”)

“Ja i Vy” (“I and You”)

“Voin Agamemnona” (“Agamemnon’s Warrior”)

 

Georgi Ivanov:

“S bezchelovechnoju sud’boj” (“In any polemic with inhuman fate”)

 

Vladislav Khodasevich:

“Kad vyskazhu moim kosnojazych’em” (“How can this tangled tongue of mine express”)

“Obo vsem v odnikh stikhakh ne skazhesh’” (“Takes More Than Verses to Tell the Whole Tale”)

“Obez’jana” (“The Monkey”)

“Akrobat” (“Walking a Tightrope”)

“Lastochki” (“Swallows”)

“Slepoj” (“Blind”)

“Pod zemlej” (“Underground”)

“Tak byvaet pochemu-to” (“So it happens; who knows why?”)

“John Bottom” (“The Ballad of John Bottom’s Arm”)

“Ballada” (“Orpheus Ascendant”)

“Pered zerkalom” (“Standing in front of a mirror”)

“Vesennij lepet ne razlezhit” (“If verses’ teeth are tightly clenched”)

 

Mikhail Lermontov:

“Vykhozhu odin ja na dorogu” (“By night I walk alone, distraught”)

“Parus” (“The Sail”)

“Predskazanie” (“A Portent of Calamity”)

“Angel” (“The Angel”)

“Nebo i zvezdy” (“Sky and Stars”)

“Gornye vershiny” (“Alpine peaks quiescent”)

 

Osip Mandelstam:

“Kak po ulistam Kieva-Vija” (“Gogol-Mogol’s Ogre”)

“Tvoim uzkim plecham pod bichami krasnet’” (“Black Candle”)

“Kogda Psikheja-zhizn’ spuskaetsja k tenjam” (“When Psyche, Soul of Life, a.k.a. Anima”)

“Lastochka” (“Blind Swallows”)

“Skripachka” (“Violinist”)

“Na strashnoj vysote bluzhdajushchij ogon’” (“Petropolis Dying”)

“Mne kholodno. Prozrachnaja vesna” (“I’m cold. The season of transparence”)

“V Petropole prozrachnom my umrem” (“In transparent Petropolis we all will die”)

 

Samuil Marshak:

“Mat’” (“Mother”)

Translation of Robert Burns, “Honest Poverty” (“Chestnaja bednost’”)

Translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 129, “Disbursement of spirit and shame’s dissipation” (“Izderzhki dukkha i styda rastrata”)

Translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 90, “If you’re to bid farewell to loving me” (“Uzh esli ty razljubish’-- tak teper’”)

Translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 81, “Will my lot be dear you, my friend, to bury” (“Tebe li menja pridetsja khoronit’”)

Translation of Shakespeare Sonnet No. 116, “To part the meld of two hearts intermingled” (“Meshat’ soedinen’ju dvukh serdets”)

Translation of Robert Burns, “Coming Through the Rye” (“Probirajas’ do kalitki”)

 

Vladimir Mayakovsky:

“Tuchkiny shtuchki” (“Clouds Take Shape Take Shapeless”)

“Nash marsh” (“Our March”)

“Rossii” (“To Russia [The Overseas Ostrich]”)

“Khoroshee otnoshenie k loshadjam” (“Treating Horsies Nice”)

“Ja schastliv!” (“I’m Happy!”)

 

Vladimir Nabokov:

“Lastochka” (“The Swallow”)

 

Boris Pasternak:

Translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 73, “You look at me and see that time of year” (“To vremja goda vidish’ ty vo mne”)

“Zimnjaja noch’” (“Winter Night”)

“Zemlja” (“The Earth”)

“Gefsimanskij sad” (“The Garden of Gethsemane”)

“V bol’nitse” (“In the Hospital”)

 

Aleksandr Pushkin:

“Zhelanie” (“Desire”)

“V krovi gorit ogon’ zhelanija” (“Desire’s flame in my blood burning”)

“Na kholmakh Gruzii lezhit nochnaja mgla” (“The hills of Georgia lie quiescent, swathed in night”)

“Prorok” (“The Prophet”)

“Elegija” (“An Elegy”)

“Ja vas ljubil” (“I loved you, love may still be so inclined”)

“Pora, moj drug, pora” (“Now is the time, my friend”)

“Vospominanie” (“Remembrance”)

“Otsy pustynnyki i zheny neporochny” (“The anchorites in deserts and the women pious, chaste”)

“Dar naprasnyj, dar sluchajnyj” (Based on pure chance, a useless gift”)

 

Robert Rozhdestvensky:

“Mark Chagal” (“Chagall”)

“Noktjurn” (“Nocturne”)

“Mgnovenija” (“Evanescence”)

“Ty” (“You”)

“Na zemle bezzhalostno malen’koj” (“On an earth pathetically small”)

 

Konstantin Sluchevsky:

“Posle kazni v Zheneve” (“An Execution in Geneva”)

 

Fedor Sologub:

“Vysoka luna gospodnja” (“High in the sky is God’s moon”)

 

Arseny Tarkovsky:

“Zhili-byli” (“The Year Nineteen”)

 

Nikolai Tikhonov:

“Prazdnichnyj, veselyj, besnovatyj” (“Festive feeling, joyous and frenetic”)

“My razuchilis’ nishchim podavat’” (“For greasing palms of beggars seems we’ve lost the knack”)

“Veter” (“The Wind”)

 

A.K Tolstoy:

“Ballada o kamergere Delarju” (“The Ballad of Chamberlain Delarue”)

“Tropar’” (“Troparion from  the Poem ‘John Damascene’”)

 

Fedor Tyutchev:

“Tikho v ozere struitsja” (“Softly o’er mere-waters’ ripples stream on”)

“Svyatye gory” (“The Holy Mountains”) [with Anna Tyutchev]

“Vous, dont on voit briller, dans les nuits azurées” (“O stars who pour your benefaction”)

“Ja znal ee eshche togda” (“I knew her even way back when”)

“Kad neozhidanno i jarko” (“Rainbow”)

“Khot’ ja i svil gnezdo v doline” (“I’ve built my nest in earthbound vale”)

“Kak khorosho ty, O more nochnoe” (“O sea of night, how fine you are!”)

“Sijaet solntse, vody bleshchut” (“Sunshine sparkles, water shimmers”)

“Smotri, kak na rechnom prostore” (“Hearken at the river swift”)

“Konchen pir, umolkli khory” (“Done the feast, the songs are sung”)

“Mal’aria” (“Miasmas”)

“Teni sizye smesilis’” (“Blended were the shadows dove-blue”)

“Pesok sypuchij po koleni” (“Up to our axles in crumbly sand”)

“Silentium”

“Ot zhizni toj chto bushevala zdes’” (“The life that once in these parts teemed”)

“Nakanune godovshchiny 4 avgusta 1864 g.” (“On the Eve of the Anniversary of Aug. 4, 1864”)

“Slyzy ljudskie, o slyzy ljudskie” (“O tears of humanity”)

“Vesennjaja Groza” (“Spring Thunderstorm”)

 

Marina Tsvetaeva:

“Molitva” (“A Prayer”)

“Osen’ v Taruse” (“Autumn in Tarusa”)

“P.E. : 6” (“For P.E. : 6”)

“Vchera eshche v glaza gljadel” (“Just yesterday you gazed into my eyes”)

“Tak” (“Cause”)

“Bessonnitsa. 9” (“Insomnia. 9”)

“Bessonnitsa. 3” (“Insomnia.3”)

“Krasnoju kistju” (“Birthday”)

“Chetvertyj god” (“Going on Four”)

“Uzh skol’ko ikh upalo v etu bezdnu” (“So many have been swallowed up and perished”)

“Popytka revnosti” (“An Attempt at Jealousy”)

“Mne nravitsja, chto Vy bol’ny ne mnoj” (“I’m glad that you’re not indisposed with feelings steeped in me”)

 

Evgenij Vinokurov:

“Vesna” (“Spring”)

 

Maximillian Voloshin:

“Svyataja Rus’” (“Holy Rus”)

 

Vladimir Vysotsky:

“Odna nauchnaja nagadka” (“A Matter for Historical and Scientific Enquiry”)

 

Nikolai Zabolotsky:

“Ustupi mne, skvorets, ugolok” (“Let me lodge, starling-bird, in your birdhouse columbary”)

“Lastochka” (“The Swallow”)

“Detstvo” (“Childhood”)

More Thoughts On Laughter

                                                                          Laughing Hyena

Laughing Weed

                                                                      

                                                                      ON LAUGHTER

d

 

Derision Bespeaks Sinfulness

The Christian religion cannot get away from the idea that there is something sinful and shameful about laughing. Maybe because Christianity came to replace old pagan religions in which laughter and bodily sexual excess often went hand in hand. Sex is bad, then so is laughter. The Russian poet Zhukovsky once wrote, “With us [Orthodox Christian Russians] laughter is viewed as a sin, and, consequently, anyone who likes to joke and scoff must be a great sinner” (letter of January 4, 1845).

 

God’s Sense of Humor

“A divine sense of humor sounds sacrilegious to us, as though it would distract from perfection. But the cosmos is as comical as it is awesome, the product of a fantastical imagination. Whatever else the Creator may be, He/She is not dull, drab or ponderous. Consider the hippo, the orchid, the volcano, the purple-bottomed baboon, the shooting star and duck-billed platypus. Noah’s Ark alone is a comic opera of incredible inventiveness.”

Sydney J. Harris

 

The Paroxysms of Laughter

The folklorist Vladimir Propp said that primitive peoples danced before hunts, wars, sowing, with the aim of putting paroxysmal movements to work to influence supernatural spirits or Nature herself. “Dance is nothing other than a paroxysmal effort.” Shamans also go into paroxysmal seizures in aid of moving the supernatural to work for them. Laughter is paroxysmal as well, and this is why it is often considered to have magical power.

 

Laughter and the Hideous

In Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts a sixteen-year-old girl with a special problem writes a letter: “When I was a little girl, it was not so bad because I got used to the kids on the block making fun of me, but now I would like to have boyfriends like the other girls and go out on Saturday nights, but no boy will take me because I was born without a nose—although I am a good dancer and have a nice shape and my father buys me pretty clothes.”

 

“The reader who doesn’t laugh at this, even as the heart weeps, is not on West’s wavelength. The pathos is rubbed in by the punchline, the abrupt switch from the horror of the condition to girlish vanities. That kind of friction between thoughts or emotions that don’t quite belong with each other often ignites laughter, and West was a master of the technique.”

Walter Goodman in New York Times Book Review

 

Sure as hell, though, in our Time of The New Goody-Good, they’ll be banning and burning Miss Lonelyhearts.

 

Did God put us on earth to sit with clenched sphincters? No. Then why in our modern age are there so many sphincter clenchers?

 

Definition of Homo sapiens: the creature that can weep in the face of the pitiable, while laughing uproariously at the same time.

 

“In the Gospel there is neither laughter nor carnal love, and one drop of one or the other reduces all the pages of that wonderful book to ashes.”

Vas. Vas. Rozanov, Solitaria

 

Lines of Demarcation

In human conduct, and especially in humans observing rituals, what is the line of demarcation between sincere conviction and pretending? None can be established. Do even the most pious and fervent Christians really believe that in the Eucharist they are eating and drinking the real body and blood of Christ? The truth that this is so is pounded into their heads as children, but, notwithstanding all the pounding, does not at least one small part of them only pretend to believe? Take this one step further, to the preposterous myth about the existence of heaven and hell. Does anyone really, truly, totally believe that myth? No.

 

Intense Nervous Stress Often Occasions Laughter

Two examples from Shakespeare. In his grossly brutal play Titus Andronicus, the hero, whose hand has been cut off, laughs. Asked why, he replies, “Why, I have not another tear to shed.” In Macbeth, the hero’s wife, Lady Macbeth, right in the middle of conniving at murder, thinks of framing the grooms, and gets in a pun: “I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal [with blood], for it must seem their guilt” [my emphasis].

Sully, “Essay on Laughter”

 

You ever try to tickle yourself? It won’t work. Tickle me here, tickle me, dear, tickle me, love, in me lonesome ribs.

 

Like scratching your nose with your elbow. This is what they’re asking us to do, in The Time of the Great Plague. Try it. See? It can’t be done.

 

Laughter Through Tears, Tears Through Laughter

“It is scarcely possible to point out any difference between the tear-stained face of a person after a paroxysm of excessive laughter and after a bitter fit of crying.”

Darwin

 

Dog Laugh

Dogs smile with their eyes but they laugh with their tails. A tail is an awkward thing to laugh with, as you can see by the way they bend themselves half double in extreme hilarity, trying to shift that rear-end exuberance forward into the main scene of action.

Max Eastman, Enjoyment of Laughter

 

Sardonic Laughter

French archeologist Salomon Reinach writes that this term originates in the practice, in Ancient Sardinia, of immolating the aged and infirm, and laughing ritually in the process. Before being put to death the old people would laugh ritually as well, as a way of laughing themselves into a new birth in a different world. Laughter in conjunction with violent death is attested elsewhere as well: “The Sardinians laughed while sacrificing their old people; the Troglodytes laughed while washing their dead.”

Reinach, “Le rire rituel,” Revue de l’Université de Bruxelles,

 6 (1910-1911) p. 585-602

 

But elsewhere Reinach also insists that the adjective “sardonic” derives from an adverb that describes a way of laughing with your teeth stuck out (“rire en montrant les dents”).

 

Buck-toothed laughing. Har.

 

Boisterous Laughter Blended with Grieving

Description of behavior at Irish wakes in the early twentieth century: “A hand of cards would be dealt to the deceased, a tobacco pipe put in his mouth, and during the dancing of a jig or hornpipe the corpse would be brought out onto the floor and danced around the room. The horseplay sometimes was so fast and furious that the body would be thrown to the floor.”

Journal of American Folklore, 83 (1970), p. 483

 

Emerge Laughing

A single person in the history of humanity, Zarathustra, is said to have emerged laughing from the womb. Har, har, har.

 

What Is Spontaneous Laughter, What Are Spontaneous Tears?

If you make yourself laugh or cry on purpose, when nothing’s really funny or sad, does that make for a different sort of laughing, or weeping? Not really. Many cultures employ wailing women for funerals; they are to set the tone for manifestations of grief on the part of the mourners. So you may say that these hired wailers are not wailing spontaneously—they are acting out the grief. Maybe so, at the beginning, but quite likely once they get into the spirit of it they may begin wailing serious wails, crying genuine tears. Same goes for fake, forced laughter; you do it long enough and quite often it becomes genuine. So where to draw the line between fakery and the genuine in human behavior? It cannot be drawn, since we blend our real selves with our pretend selves so seamlessly.

[excerpted from the book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]

Translation of Poem by Afanasy Fet, Афанасий Афанасьевич Фет, "Кот поет, глаза прищуря," "Eyes asquint, the tomcat purrs"

 

* * *

 Афанасий Афанасьевич Фет 

(1820—1892)

Кот поет, глаза прищуря,
Мальчик дремлет на ковре,
На дворе играет буря,
Ветер свищет на дворе.

 

«Полно тут тебе валяться,
Спрячь игрушки да вставай!
Подойди ко мне прощаться,
Да и спать себе ступай».

 

Мальчик встал. А кот глазами
Поводил и всё поет;
В окна снег валит клоками,
Буря свищет у ворот.

 

1842

 

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Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Eyes asquint, the tomcat purrs,  

Small boy drowsing on the floor,

In the courtyard snowstorm whirs,

Wind is whistling through the door.  

“Quite enough of dawdling, quite; 

Put away your toys, get up!

 Come and kiss me nighty-night,

Then to bed you go, young pup.”

The boy arises, cat’s eyes shadow

His departure, purring on;

Snow in clumps sticks to the window,

Snowstorm whistles far and long.