B.Akhmadulina, The Alien Craft - Translation (Rus.) Poem by Lyudmila Purgina

by Bella Akhmadulina

The other's craft as urge for me to do it.
I know - it's fault, but every time I dare.
This moment my work is being neglected,
Vindictively she's going separate.
That's true, I feel fidelity to her:
Assidiously I'm writing poems on corner
Of table, but there arises jealousy
When I do see the master working.
When highest tone singer takes with pleasure
In restauraunt, which I'm passing by,
When I do see the masterpice of painter,
Producer of the film - I bate the breath of mine.
When master makes a furnace of red bricks
In tenantless and new great house,
I also take clay and try to counterfeit,
Then wipe my hands of grass's cover.
Oh, then I'll be the operator!
I'll sit at table as he is simply doing,
Monotonously would look into the apparatus
And squint my eye on the selected point...
Oh, I'll be greedy then in planting
The trees and pouring there water!
Then I wish lines of models to design
By smearing the colours on palette mold.
So alien work is trying to direct,
As I can't help avoiding its attraction.
But yet I don't wish another fate,
And bliss such mere poor pleasure.