If I can't have love, if I can't find peace, / Give me a bitter glory. 
My shadow serves as the friend I crave. 
Let love become the gravestoneThat lies upon my life.
We learned not to meet anymore,We don't raise our eyes to one another,
But we ourselves won't guarantee
What could happen to us in an hour.
All that I am hangs by a thread tonight 
And it's not because I'm tortured Or by some delirium swayed
That I conjure up misfortune:
It is just my trade.
I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, my songs are not for them to praise. 
I marvel at everything as if it were new. 
I know: yes, no, even I must tear offThe delicate daisy petals.
Everyone on earth is destined to feel
The torments of love.
And in the depths of music, I didn't find the answer,And again there was silence, and again the ghost
of summer.
But I am not allowed to forgetThe taste of the tears of yesterday.
You are many years late; how happy I am to see you 
All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death's wing flashed ahead. 
Your voice is wild and simple. You are untranslatable Into any one tongue. 
It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently. 
The stars of death stood over us. And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of Black Marias. 
It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace. 
Without love, I'm more at ease, I'm sure. The sky is high, the mountain wind is sweeping,
And all my thoughts are innocent and pure.
In those years only the dead smiled, Glad to be at rest: And Leningrad city swayed like A needless appendix to its prisons. 
Now that you're there, where everything is known-tell me:What else lived in that house besides us?
I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak. 
Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me. 
Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter. 
You will hear thunder and remember me,and think: she wanted storms ...
Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree. 
I defendNot my voice, but my silence
That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest. 
A town loved with bitter love. 
Let love be the gravestoneLying on my life.
I seem to myself, as in a dream,An accidental guest in this dreadful body.
A loss, but who still mourns the breath of one woman, or laments one wife? Though my heart never can forget, how, for one look, she gave up her life. 
But don't raise your eyes in defiance,Protect my life, my dear.
They're brighter than first violets,
But deadly to me, I fear.
And you know, I agree to everything:I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy,
Darkness will be light and sin lovely.
Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life. 
As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future a terrible festival of dead leaves.
