Bella Akhmadulina

‘Twas snowing. And to the snow,
To cold of the heaven and earth,
The deeper I slept the more grown
Was Chegem tulips' warming blaze.
...

Rain flogs my face and collar-bones,
a thunderstorm roars over musts.
You thrust upon my flesh and soul,
like tempests upon ships do thrust.
...

Of hills and woods this world consists,
Of skies that cover all;
It's just a broil of voices midst
A little boy and girl.
...

And I shall tell you at the end:
farewell, don't pledge self to love, helpless.
I go mad, or just ascend
to the high echelon of madness.
...

No word about love! But I'm mute it about -
My larynx, long ago, had lost its nightingales.
There're just the fire flames with empty skies around,
No word about love - e'en if the moonlight reigns.
...

To recollect! It's better than to have.
Just when this trice and one, that's gone to yore,
together merge, like a bell's tongue and cave,
a world receives one sound-poem more.
...

Has not been heated to the white,
Yet it is whitening with its heaven -
Night o'er Neva. The mind is stiffened
With sadness and the young delight.
...

How do you make this, o my colleges-comrades?
Having waked up, while dark's moving to light,
you take your pen and open your notes,
and write - and is this quite enough to write?
...

The coming day was whitened in the dark,
The day, that's come, was much alike a-singing,
And those four - whose sight was wonders bringing -
Those four rowers moved me in a bark.
...

Oh, trees! You are brothers of mine.
‘Twas dark'ning, but my eyes defined,
For sure - to the heaven, so starry -
That you, for your night rest, have hurried,
...

Oh, my friends, only verse is the first of all us,
First of me, first of time in its triumphal stroll,
First of first love, of first blades of first rising grass,
First of first snowflakes, and, at last, - first of all.
...

Oh, what a great was our fortune,
we were so lucky at the times,
when was a running disk of Chopin,
the only border between us
...

There is again a change in Nature,
the green is very rough in sight,
and rises - in a lofty fashion -
the figure of the mushroom, white.
...

She's come and stands - in her full eighteen years.
"How old are you?" She answer'd, "I am eighteen…"
The polygon of hands, cheek-bones, and knees.
A proud in angularity quite melted.
...

Oh, this death - not of mine - is a credit and loss
for my life, always pushing a wall with its brow.
But aft Theater's lamps had been lighted in halls
and extinguished - is Tragedy entering now.
...

The player's disk - a silly wonder -
The simple player - trifles at all!
It's heard as if were distant thunder
From the earth's deeps, from ‘under-under'
...

I'm clinging to the noble style,
I'm charmed by speech of our ancestors,
It can be sharper then we try,
And newer than our newest lectures.
...

You need the simple candle to flash,
The simple one, the wax cylinder,
And the old style that ere was hidden,
In your remembrance will be fresh.
...

The clock's chiming proclaims fall around:
Harder then in the year that had passed,
And an apple beats the icy ground
In so many as apples are times.
...

Oft it comes thus: the kind of pleasant languor,
The clock's weak chiming sounds in my ear,
And far pills of the passing thunder's anger.
It seems to me, that I can badly hear
...