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

You thought I was that type: that you could forget me, and that I'd plead and weep and throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare, or that I'd ask the sorcerers for some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: my precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working ikon, and by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you.

Song falls silent, music is dumb, But the air burns with their fragrance, And white winter, on its knees, Observes everything with reverent attention.

Sweet to me was not the voice of man, But the wind's voice was understood by me. The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul, But I loved the silver willow best of all.

My shadow serves as the friend I crave

As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.

If I can't have love, if I can't find peace, / Give me a bitter glory.