Sixth Sense
Fine the wine that loves us,
Good bread baked for our sakes
And the women who torment and tease
Yet please us and in the end let us take them.
But what do we do with the red
Hue of sunset that lets the sky grow cold
With blue in a still, strange serenity?
What to do with a poetry that lives forever.
You can't eat or drink or even kiss
The color of a setting sun or sound
Of poetic line; even as we wring our hands
And try to grab it quick, beauty flies.
As the boy sometimes watching girls bathing
In a lake forgets what he was playing at
And knowing nothing of love sublime
Is tormented by mysterious desires,
As in the primal jungle of the world where
Some mud covered creature, wet and bare
First felt upon his shoulders wings
Unfurled, and in helpless fear howled
Into dense veldt; so through the centuries —
O God, how long? — under nature's knife
art, the soul cries out
of its pale, trembling flesh — from some sixth sense.
Good bread baked for our sakes
And the women who torment and tease
Yet please us and in the end let us take them.
But what do we do with the red
Hue of sunset that lets the sky grow cold
With blue in a still, strange serenity?
What to do with a poetry that lives forever.
You can't eat or drink or even kiss
The color of a setting sun or sound
Of poetic line; even as we wring our hands
And try to grab it quick, beauty flies.
As the boy sometimes watching girls bathing
In a lake forgets what he was playing at
And knowing nothing of love sublime
Is tormented by mysterious desires,
As in the primal jungle of the world where
Some mud covered creature, wet and bare
First felt upon his shoulders wings
Unfurled, and in helpless fear howled
Into dense veldt; so through the centuries —
O God, how long? — under nature's knife
art, the soul cries out
of its pale, trembling flesh — from some sixth sense.
Перевод стихотворения Николая Гумилёва «Шестое чувство» на английский язык.