Художник - перевод А. Блока

During the hot summer and stormy winter,
In days of your weddings, triumphs and sad funerals,
I wait for some ring, light one, yet unhearable
To hush my deadly, my boredom such usual.

Here - it is. With my cold attention
I wait a moment to hold, to kill it.
Under my caution and my expectation
It pulls away its light thread, invisibly.

Is that a whirl from sea? Or that'a a syrene,
Singing her Eden's songs in the leaves of trees?
Or the time stopped? Or the apple-trees
Lost their May blossom? Or an angel flees?

The hours last, producing out a world for sure.
Sounds flare out, and movement, and light.
Past looks so ardently into the future.
There's no "now". No - miserable time.

At last, in a moment, at edge of conception
Of new-born soul, of novel powers, -
The soul is striken, as by thunder, with tarnation:
The creative wit overwhelmed - that's a wind-up.

And I'm closing into a cold cage
Such a light good bird, free in role,
The bird, which tried death to carry away,
The bird, which flied up to save a soul.

Here is my cage - the steel, heavy one,
And as a golden one, in the fire of evening,
And here is my bird, once been joy at times,
Rocking her hoop, singing on window.

Her wings are cut, her songs are learned all over.
Do you like staying under window, hey?
You like the songs. But I am, forworn,
Look for the new - and in boring again.

12 december 1913