Now, like a little snake, it curls into a ball,
Bewitching your heart,
Then for days it will coo like a dove
On the little white windowsill.
Or it will flash as bright frost,
Drowse like a gillyflower…
But surely and stealthily it will lead you away
From joy and from tranquility.
It knows how to sob so sweetly
In the prayer of a yearning violin,
And how fearful to divine it
In a still unfamiliar smile.
November 24, 1911
Tsarskoye Selo
Love conquers by deception,
With a simple, artless tune.
Just recently–how strange–
You were neither sad nor gray.
…
And when it smiled,
In your garden, in the house, in the field,
No matter where you were, it seemed to you
That you were free to come and go.
You became luminous,
And, drinking its poison, enslaved.
And how much bigger the stars became,
And even the grass smelled different,
That grass of autumn.
Autumn 1911
Tsarskoye Selo
