Original
Бажання душі
Не можу жити з тих часів,Від коли я тебе зустрів,Як наших поглядів очейОб’єднав єдиний way*.
Ти у мене і в думках,Ти у мене і у снах.Та як від тебе відректись,Коли зумів я закохатись.
В душі моїй гуляєРадість щирих почуттів,Та розум мій не знає,Чого досі я хотів.
Translation
The Soul's Desire
I cannot live — not since that day,the day I met you on my way,since the one moment when our eyeswere joined into a single way*.
You're in my thoughts, and you are therein every dream of mine; and yethow could I now renounce you, whenI've gone and fallen in love with you?
Within my soul there walks aboutthe joy of feelings pure and true,and yet my reason can't make outwhat I was after — until you.
About the poem
Since their glances met “on a single way” — the English word, footnoted by the author himself — the soul has been “overgrown with love.” The poem’s charm lies in its asides: nobody “wanted to go back to Kansas,” a wink at The Wizard of Oz, and a rush of exclamation marks in the sixth stanza where everything the soul wanted turns out to be one person. Seven rhymed quatrains, and a footnote kept in every language. The awkwardness is part of the poem’s warmth. Love arrives not as polished certainty but as something that surprises the speaker, embarrasses him and exceeds his vocabulary. The little explanatory aside about way makes that vulnerability feel deliberately preserved.