Original
Радостна грусть
Был темным вечер,Дул с далека холодный ветер.Я вышел с дома и пошелТуда, куда не знал никто.
Часами по улицам ходил,Без никого, совсем один.Очень плохо было мне:Я думал только о тебе.
Но вдруг, увидел вдалекеОбраза твоего сияние.Вскоре с тобой мы повстречались,И … вдвоем остановились.
Translation
Joyful Sorrow
The evening had gone dark and cold;from far away a cold wind rolled.I left the house and walked out, onto where nobody knew I'd gone.
For hours I walked the streets, alone,with no one — on my own.It was so bad with me, so bad:I thought of you — the only thought I had.
But suddenly, far off, I sawthe shining of your image.And soon we met, the two of us,and… we stopped, together.
About the poem
The oxymoron of the title governs a simple story: a cold evening, a long walk alone “where no one knew,” thoughts only of her — and then the radiance of her figure in the distance, the embrace, a whispered “I have fallen into the lake of your love,” a kiss held long enough to count as an answer. The weather follows the heart: the clouds leave and the moon appears. A first kiss written as a rebirth, in eight plain quatrains. The title’s contradiction is therefore exact rather than ornamental. Sorrow exists because the beloved is absent; joy appears because she can still be imagined approaching. The poem holds both feelings at once, refusing the easier choice of calling the evening simply happy or sad.