Comments: WE HAVE NOT THE TIME.

Hmmm. Maybe this one should go on my office door.

Posted by agm at August 28, 2004 05:21 PM

Variation on a theme, translation (or, rather, approximation) mine. [unfinished]

Yuri Levitansky, 1999

All that is needed is to peer,- Oh, my God
That's all it takes – to peer closely – and to notice,
And you'll not leave, and there is no place on the whole Earth
Where you can hide from sudden depth of those eyes.

All that is needed is to read in,- Oh, my God
That's all it takes to slow down on that sentence,
And hesitate without jumping to the next one,
Not turn that page but pause, and think, and read again.

If not- well, I regret you've missed the line.
Still, line remains, in silence waits to be discovered.
Her day will come. Time is conserving, growing power
Of lines, - and everything what's happening to them.

Not so with eyes – eyes will desert forever you
Like some obscure land that's never found,
Like some obscure Rome that's not uncovered
And there is no time to uncover, that's the drag.

Posted by Tatyana at August 28, 2004 06:28 PM

Here's the original, for Russian speakers. It sounds very promising -- I'll be interested to see your version of the last three stanzas. (And it's an excellent companion piece to the Lamennais quote.)

Posted by language hat at August 28, 2004 08:13 PM

100% free bondage - abdominal pain - adult bondage stories - [&c &c &c... hundreds of similar offers, all of which I have deleted along with the URLs accompanying these, which I have left so that Zizka's comment will not be hanging in midair -- LH]

Posted by Adam Glenn at August 28, 2004 08:16 PM

Hi, Adam! I don't think I'll be needing any today.

The poem comes through very well, Tatyana, and seems like a great poem too. I'm impressed. Translate more.

Posted by Zizka at August 28, 2004 08:55 PM

Thank you, LH and Z.
I'm not sure I'll continue - the wind have changed...
Anyway, you can listen to the song (Nikitin used the poem for lyrics) here. Go to #32 and click on the "sound" icon on the left.
[my grammophon somehow doesn't want to oblige today, but I've used this site before and it worked]

Posted by Tatyana at August 28, 2004 10:06 PM