Saturday, October 11, 2008

From Daniil Harms - Translation

Your dreams will play a cruel joke.
Your interest in the real life
Will disappear like the smoke.
The Messenger of God won't come.
Your passions and your zeal will wither,
The youth of ardent thoughts will flee...
My friend, leave dreams for the believer -
And free your mind of death - for me.

Daniil Harms.
Translated from Russian by me.

1 comment:

  1. Powerful lines, but on the very depressive side. It seems we poets often write out of anguish. Indeed, there is a quote by some famous poet to that effect.

    I like the assonance in the last two lines--leave, dreams for the believer-And free..

    And the consonance of 'ardent thoughts.'
    The poem makes me wonder who is
    speaker.

    ReplyDelete

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