“It is good here: rustle and snow-crunch...Ski tracks on the splendid fineryof the snow; a memorythat long ages agowe passed here together.”

“We are all carousers and loose women here;How unhappy we are together!”

“All's ringing, roaring, grinding, breakers' crash - and silence all at once, release:it means he is tiptoeing over pine needles,so as not to startle the light sleep of space.And it means he is counting the grainsin the blasted ears; it meanshe has come again to the Daryal Gorge,accursed and black, from another funeral.And again Moscow, where the heart's fever burns.Far off the deadly sleighbell chimes,someone is lost two steps from homein waist-high snow. The worst of times...”

“The word landed with a stony thud Onto my still-beating breast. Nevermind, I was prepared, I will manage with the rest. I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again. . . But how. The hot summer rustles Like a carnival outside my window; I have long had this premonition Of a bright day and a deserted house. ”

“And this tenderness was not likeThat which a certain poetAt the beginning of the century called trueAnd, for some reason, quiet. No, not at all—It rang out, like the first waterfall,It crunched like the crust of bluish iceAnd it prayed with a swanlike voice,And it broke down right before our eyes.”

“The celebrationsOf secret nonmeetings are empty,Unspoken conversations,Unuttered words.Glances that don't intersectDon't know where to come to rest.And only the tears rejoiceBecause they can flow and flow. Sweetbrier around Moscow,Alas! Somehow it is here ...And all this they will callLove eternal.”

“This cruel age has deflected me,like a river from this course.Strayed from its familiar shores,my changeling life has flowedinto a sister channel.How many spectacles I've missed:the curtain rising without me,and falling too. How many friendsI never had the chance to meet.”