Original
Было время
Было время, вспомнил я,Время радости и горя,Когда воздух для меняБыл не нужен. Ну и зря.
Помню жить я не хотел,Не хотел, но жил.Полюбить себя я не сумел.За мирами иными тужил.
Да, я б себя убил,Медленно, или может быстро,Если бы тебя не полюбил,И женское не ощутил тепло.
Translation
There Was a Time
There was a time, as I recall,a time of joy, a time of grief,when even air, for me, was nota need at all. And all in vain.
I didn't want to live, I remember —I didn't want to, but I lived.To love myself I never learned;for other worlds I pined and yearned.
Yes, I'd have killed myself, I would —slowly, or maybe fast —had I not fallen in love with youand felt a woman's warmth.
About the poem
A memory of not wanting to live, told with a twist. The speaker would have “killed himself, slowly or quickly,” had he not loved and felt “a woman’s warmth” — then, bored even with that, wanted to see blood, climbed to a roof, leapt, and did not fall. He wakes: it was a dream. The poem ends with an embrace and a vow spoken to a sleeping girl: never, “even at ninety.” The stray exclamation marks in mid-line are the author’s; they mark the places where the dream lurches. The dark joke at the end prevents the poem from becoming a solemn confession. Survival is linked to love, warmth and appetite, yet the speaker refuses to romanticise his own despair. The result is unsettling precisely because pain and comedy occupy the same voice.