By Joseph A. Brodsky

The English Versified Translation, by Anna A. Polibina-Polansky

Pilgrims'  Progress

By sanctuaries, coliseums,

Beside the temples, bars, bazaars.

By minarets and rare museums;

By the sepultures lightly seeming,

By squares with palaces of Tsars.

By woe and by boons of heaven,

By Mecca and Medina, Rome...

Blue luminaries ever happen

To burn their heads, to shine at domes.

They walk along, all crooked and hungry,

In shaggy cloth. Their eyes are all

Of twilight. And of dawn, are hearts their.

Sing deserts, lightnings light up lawns.

Beyond them, stars are lightly trembling,

And coarse are cries of birds of prey.

The world remains the same, all ample

Of blinding snow, of sparkling rain.

All tender is the grasping fear.

The world is false, eternal, brisk.

It's comprehensible and clear,

But yet, so ceaseless, in its bliss...

The way goes on, and it is tempting.

The sun sips out the gentle rain.

So creed and faith and hope are empty,

Illusions coming - are in vain.

So soldiers will dig up the soil.

The poets come, the snow to boil.

Transl. July, 2020; Moscow