Florence
by Alexander Blok
1
Die, Florence, die to end, Iuda...
And vanish in the age's twilight!
I shall forget you in my love, for sure,
I shan't be near in my leaving hour!
Oh Vella (* - nice from italian), laugh at yourself now,
You'd lost your beauty in your pace!
A wrinkle of the rotten grave has downed,
Perverted features of your face.
Your cars are snoring in their moving,
Your houses are awful in their kind,
You gave yourself by your will, truly,
To all-european yellow dust!
In dust the bycicles are ringing
On place, where the monk was fired,
Where Leonardo kept a dark feeling,
Where a blue dream Beato glanced!
You just disturb the pompous Medichi,
You trample lilies of your own,
And thus you can't revive to living
In the commercial dusty crowd!
In a snuffling mass - there's a mourning,
The purtred smell of roses - in temples.
Let weight of the multistoried grief goes over
In the cleaning centuries forever!
May - June 1909
2
Oh Florence, you're the iris fair;
Whom was I craving, luring for
With love so long, the love despair,
All day in the Cashin's dust bent down?
Oh, how sweet is to remember
The hopelesness, dreams alone;
To merge into your old heat, in tenderness
Of your bright soul, growing old.
But force of fate compells to parting;
Through the far distance, though, I
Shall see in dream your smoky iris,
As early youth, that had passed by.
June 1909
4
The red-hot stones are burning
My feverish and ill eye.
The smoky irises're in a flame-spot,
As if they try to fly up.
Oh, the hopelesness of sadness,
I know you all by rote!
I'm looking in the black sky there
In Italy with my black soul.
June 1909
5
The lying windows are on the black sky,
And the projector's on the old palace.
Here she is going by - in a patterned gown,
Smile is on her swarthy face.
Wine is now clouding my eye over,
Rising as fire through veins...
What do you wish to hear now, signora?
What song's worth for your sleep well?
June 1909
6
Under the heat of the Florentine laziness
You've got to be more poor in your feel:
The stares of the church are mute, and flowers
Are blossoming so sad, there underneath.
Then let you keep the remnants of your feeling,
Keep your creative lie, at least:
The light boat of arts will take you, dear,
To world, where's no boredome, no grief.
17 May 1909