A Flame's In Skies

by Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok

A Flame's In Skies 

A flame's in skies. The night lays dead and grey.

The wood's high trees are crowding around,

But in the night I clear hear sound - 

The hum of mobs in city faraway.

One can detect the set of buildings, bold,

And towers and teeth of its austere loop-holes,

And shady gardens in a fence of stones, 

And proud walls of the antique stronghold.

Such gracefully passed ages can help us 

To frame our mind for even resurrection:

By flux of being in a back direction - 

By noise of cities, vanished in the past. 

Why, Why Forever

Why, why forever to the deadly line

I'm pushed unpityingly by blows of the Fortune?

Whether all this, including life of mine,

Are only moments of the endless torture?

I want to live, tho' heart hasn't joy inside,

And happiness is just a tale to know,

But I am called in distance by some light,

And it is seemed, that I can have its glow.

Maybe, ‘tis just a spirit - this far blaze!

Maybe, my hopes are lost any ground!

But there - afar, in the unearthly space, 

Its rays are ever beautiful and proud! 

The Death Of Grandfather 

We waited commonly for sleep or even death. 

The instances were wearisome as ages. 

But suddenly the wind's refreshing breath 

Touched through the window the Holy Bible's pages: 

An old man goes there - who's now all white-haired - 

With rapid steps and merry eyes, alone, 

He smiles to us, and often calls with hand, 

And leaves us with a gait, that is well-known. 

And suddenly we all, who watched the old man's track, 

Well recognized just him who now lay before us, 

And turning in a sudden rapture back, 

Beheld a corpse with eyes forever closed ... 

And it was good for us the soul's way to trace, 

And, in the leaving one, to find the glee it's forming. 

The time had come. Recall and love in grace, 

And celebrate another house-warming!