Sunday, May 03, 2009

I loved you once - Pushkin

Listen to Pushkin's poem in the original Russian:
I loved you once: perhaps that love has yet
To die down thoroughly within my soul;
But let it not dismay you any longer;
I have no wish to cause you any sorrow.
I loved you wordlessly, without a hope,
By shyness tortured, or by jealousy.
I loved you with such tenderness and candor
And pray God grants you to be loved that way again.



And for the fun of it, Joseph Brodsky's Sixth of his "Twenty Sonnets to Mary, Queen of Scots":

I loved you. And my love of you (it seems
it's only pain) still stabs me through the brain.
The whole thing's shattered into smithereens.
I tried to shoot myself -- using a gun
is not so simple. And the temples: which one,
the right or left? Reflection, not the twitching,
kept me from acting. Jesus, what a mess!
I loved you with such strength, such hopelessness!
May God send you in others -- not a chance!
He, capable of many things at once,
won't -- citing Parmenides -- reinspire
the bloodstream fire, the bone-crushing creeps,
which melt the lead in fillings with desire
to touch -- "your hips," I must delete -- your lips.

(Source)

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