My Life's Burden...

My life’s burden’s for me light and shone,
I won’t you to be baffled or wound;
And not God, who had thought on a stone –
I do pity the stone he’s found.

I do pity the violet, faded -
Just in vain – just forgot among pages,
And the mist, by which glass has been laden,
Then – dissolved by hot tears for ages.

Not the mad woman’s pain, but the willow
Is awaking my heart’s even sadness,
‘Cause, while lulling this pain on leaves’ pillows,
It was tired and cut by winds merciless.

poem by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
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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.

poem by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
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Poetry (Sonnet)

The life’s chance and creative spirit
United painfully in you,
And midst the beauty’s hitting views
There’s not so airy and exquisite…

In the world desert’s sandy grounds –
Where all’s a host, you fell in love
With cosmos of the different sounds
And flowers of troubled life.

Untouchable, transparent wholly!
We’re pined by you, oh, goddess holly,
When, through pale slots, you, vaguely viewed,

Such grasp all our thought and body,
That if to fall in love with you –
Love will be mad for everybody.

poem by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
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Ego

A week son of the dying generation,
I would not seek the roses of Alps,
I will not gain the beautiful sensation,
Not from wave’s noise, nor from young tempests hums.

But I would see on fields of scarlet glass
The brilliant and forever crying highlands,
The faded flowers in whites of tables’ vase,
The ornament, that flame of evening founds.

And when my head has sunk in nightly rest,
I read dreamed stories, lost of any real,
Forgotten words of books, burned in forgotten past,
In hazy sleep, I kiss with hot appeal.

poem by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
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Harmony

In midst of waves, there are the silver beads
And scraped by time paints of the white enamel …
I so like the morns which autumn breeds,
For their caress, so short and so gentle.

And I do like the foam on the shore,
When it again is whitening in mire,
And, greedy, I am hiding here a store
Of hazy days, while skies are full of fire.

But somewhere there, they’re roaming in flame,
The same ones as I am, without name and number,
And somebody’s young being – just the same –
Instead of me, is ceasing in sad amber.

poem by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
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Sad Country

Sad and made of copper
The symbol we are wed,
Even our comedies
End a little sadly….
Our joyful neighbors
Wear their infernal
Hirsute fur coats….
And that only… banal
Are our mangy bears
With prey trembling
In blood-covered lips.

For what purpose, when dreams betray,
That words brim over with delusions?
For what purpose, on a forgotten grave,
Grass grows greener and emits a noise?

For what purpose these lunar heights,
If my garden is silent and dark?
And the tails of her plaits are untied,

[...] Read more

poem by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
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A Gas Butterfly

Tell me what's happening to me?
Why is my heart beating so fervently?
why has this madness, like a wave,
Broken through the rock of habit?

Is it my strength or just my torment
I'm too disturbed to tell:
From the shimmering lines of life
I extract a forgotten phrase...

Is it a thief who turns his lantern
Upon the crowd of dreary letters?
I can't help reading the phrase,
But haven't the strength to go back...

It really had to flare up,
But it only harries the darkness;
All night, like a gas-flame butterfly
It trembles, but cannot escape...

poem by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
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September

The gardens full of gold and decay,
With lure of purple of the swelling ailments,
And tardy heat of sun in curves of sunbeam’s remnants,
Unable to distil into the fragrant spray.

The carpets’ yellow silk and traces, roughly laid,
And the avowed false of the preceding meeting,
And ponds of parks, extinguished, deep and sad,
And ready long ago for suffering and missing…

But ones’ hearts only seek past beauty in decays,
Just the allurement of enchanted forces,
And they, who’ve tested the unearthly lotus,
Are thrilled by fragrance of autumnal days.

poem by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
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The Candles Are Brought In

Don’t you have the strange vision sometimes
(When a dark penetrates in a house)
Of another existence for us,
Where we live in the other life’s phases?

There, a shade’s softly pressed to a shade,
And such wonderful minute there hovers,
Where as if, through the beams by eyes sent,
We unite our bodies and souls.

We afraid that a word or a move
Would get off this magnificent instant,
As if one puts his ear above
And recalls us to listen at distance.

But as soon as a candle is kindled,
Second world would this minute retire…
And from eyes through the light’s rays inclined,
Shades would run into pale-blue of fire.

poem by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
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To the Poet

In different clearness of rays,
In addling amalgam of visions
We always live in world’s things’ reign
With its triad of space division.

And spreading borders of this life,
Or multiplying forms by fable,
To hide your I from not-I’s eyes
You will be never-never able.

This power’s your leading star,
It has your God and nature’s law,
And before it, it’s pale and far –
The Art, belittling things’ great role.

You can not flee from slaving reign
To look for charms of airy smears,
The deepness is not verse’s main,
But just a puzzle which it bears.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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poem by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
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