(1923) looking at you makes me sad so painful what pity i guess only the copper leaves are left for us in September other lips have taken your warmth and little cold rain is drizzling from your soul well, it doesn't scare me i've found a different joy and there is nothing left but the yellow rot and dumpness i haven't exactly preserved myself either for quiet life and smiles.. walked too few roads made too many mistakes.. funny life, funny mismatch has always been.. and will be and the garden looks like a cemetery covered with the white bones of treetranks we'll die like the flowers and dissapear like the guests of the garden since there are no flowers in the winter why be sad about them?

(1917) The red wings of the sunset are dying Quietly, the fence is snoozing in the fog Don't be so melancholy, my tiny white cabin That again you and I are alone. Surrounded by blue The moon is cleaning her horns On the straw of the roof I did not go after her, didn't follow And didn't walk her to the end of the field. I know, years will quiet my worry This pain, just like years, will pass And her innocent mouth and soul She will save for another. The one who begs for joy is weak Only the proud live strongly But another will crumple her and throw her away Like an old, rotten horse-collar. It's not out of misery that I wait for my fortune One day there will be a nasty snowstorm And she will come to this land And she'll come inside to warm her child. She'll take off her warm coat and shawls Will sit cozily by my fire And will say quietly and affectionately That the child looks like me.

hooligan (1919) Rain is cleaning with wet brooms Willows' poop in the meadows Wind, you can spit armfuls of leaves - I am a hooligan, just like you I love it when the blue thickets, Like bulls with heavy step, Stomachs wheezing with leaves, Soil the knees of the tree trunks Here it is, my red flock! Who could sing to you better than I? I can see the twilight licking human footprints... My Russia, wooden Russia! I am the only one to sing to you I have fed with berries and mint The sadness of my beast's poems Let the night bring the moon's pitcher Draw up the milk of the birch grove! Looks like the church near by Wants to strangle someone with the hands of it's crosses! Something sinister walks the hills, Drips thief's spite into our garden But I myself am a bandit and a cad And by blood - a horse thief Who ever saw how boil in the night Legions of the bird-cherry trees? I was born to the night in the blue roads To stalk the dark with my knives Oh, The yellow bush of my head has withered I got sucked into the poetry prison Sentenced to turn the grindstones of the verse In penal servitude of feelings But don't fret, crazy wind, Keep spitting leaves in the meadows The label "poet" won't erase me, Even in my songs, I am, like you, a hooligan.

(1921) Not sorry, not calling, not crying, All will pass like smoke of white apple trees Seized with the gold of autumn, I will no longer be young Now you won't beat so, My heart, touched with cold And the land of the birch-tree cotton Won't seduce me into running barefoot My vagabond spirit, there are yet fewer times When you move the fire of my song Oh my lost freshness, Strorm of eyes and spring flood of feelings! Now I am with my wishes stingier Did I dream you up, my life? As if in the early, booming spiring I have galloped through on a pink stallion All, all in this life is mortal Quietly flows copper of leaves from the mapple So be you forever blessed That which came to flower and die.

(1924-1925) To be a poet - is the same As when by truth of life You scar your own tender flesh, And with the blood of feelings Caress the souls of others. To be a poet - to sing freedom, As you know it best The song of nightgale doesn't hurt him - His song is always the same. Canary mimiking someone's voice - Pitiful and silly bauble World needs real songs - so sing like only you can Even if you sond like a frog. Mohammed has overdone it in Quran When he forbade strong drink That is why the poet will not stop Drinking wine before he goes to the torture And when a poet goes to his lover, And finds her lying with another He, kept by life-sustaining liquid, Won't send a knife into her heart. But, burning up with jealous recklessness, Will whistle on the way back home "So what, so I will die a vagabond, On this earth such fate is also known."

(1925) Life - a lie with charming sadness That is where lies her strength And with her rought hand, She writes the word of fate. Always, when I close my eyes, I say, "Touch your heart and see, Life - a lie, but even She sometimes Adorns a lie with joys. Turn your face to greying sky, Telling fortune by the moon, Calm, mortal, and do not ask The truth you do not need." It's good in the bird-cherry tree storm To think that life is fated way. Let my easy lovers lie to me, Let my easy friends betray me. Let them caress me with a tender word, Let the wicked tongue be sharper than a razor, - I've long been living ready for anything, Mercilessly used to everything. These heights chill my soul, There is no warmth in the fire of the stars. Those whom I loved, have renounced me, For whom I've lived - forgotten me. But still, unwanted and exiled, I look with smile at the sunrise, And on this earth, so close and dear, I thank this life for everything.