Пляски смерти - перевод А. Блока

The death dancing
By Alexander Blok

How hard to be a deadman among people,
How hard to be considered as alive!
But I should sink to crowd for career,
The clang of bones hiding perfectly this time...

The living men are sleeping. But a deadman
Stands up from a coffin, goes to Senat,
To bank, to court... And whiter is the heaven 
In night, more black is evil sigh.

The pens are creaking loudly in triumph.
The deadman's working out a report.
The workday over. He is telling the the senator,
Wagging with back, the obscene anecdote...

It's evening. The little rain has showered
With a dirty all the passers-by,
And houses, and other objects...
The deadman's going by a taxi fast

To a hall, overcrowded, with columns,
He is in haste to enter a noisy ball.
He had put on his graceful black dresscoat,
And smile to him the mistress fool with the spouse.

He was exhasted with the day in office,
The clang of bones now is hushed by music...
He presses hands of friends with a great force -
He must look like a living man in view!

And only at column he would glance at
Her girlfriend - dead as he is, empty, cold.
And their speach would be only a role,
Their true words would be such as heard:

"My tired friend, it's a strange hall, rather." -
"My tired friend, the grave seems rather cool." -
"It's midnight time." "Have you invited
NN, she fell in love to you?"

And there - NN is searching ardently
His look, his body with a blood excited...
In her face, beautiful as the maid's one,
There is a sensless, but so living love...

He whispers her the words with no meaning,
But captivating words for the alive,
And he looks as the shoulders turn pink,
And on his shoulder her head is bending up...

And there the poison sharp of common rage now
He's wasting outwards with a strange rage...
"How he is clever! He is loving so!"

But in her ears there is a clang;
That is the clang of bones over bones.

19.02.1912