I could have loved the winter,
But the burden is heavy.
Even smoke cannot
Escape into the clouds.
The sharply etched lives,
The unweildly flight,
The pauperish blue
Of the tear-swollen ice.
But I love snow, weakened
By the easy life above,
Sometimes glistening white,
Sometimes purple lilac…
And particularly thawing,
When, revealing the peaks,
It settles down weary
On a sliding precipice.
Immaculate dreams,
Like cattle in the mist,
On the agonizing brink
On spring’s holocaust.
by Иннокентий Фёдорович Анненский
(Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky)
(1909)
translated by Lubov Yakovleva and Daniel Weissbort
Снег
Полюбил бы я зиму,
Да обуза тяжка…
От нее даже дыму
Не уйти в облака.
Эта резанность линий,
Этот грузный полет,
Этот нищенский синий
И заплаканный лед!
Но люблю ослабелый
От заоблачных нег —
То сверкающе белый,
То сиреневый снег…
И особенно талый,
Когда, выси открыв,
Он ложится усталый
На скользящий обрыв,
Точно стада в тумане
Непорочные сны —
На томительной грани
Всесожженья весны.
Annensky, renowned for his great learning, was the director of the lycee in Tsarskoye Selo near St. Petersburg where many poets from Aleksandr Pushkin to Anna Akhmatova were educated. His poems are refined and somewhat cold recalling the autumnal severity of that town and reflecting themes of weariness and futility, conquerable only through ove or art. Though Annensky was not celebrated in his own time, his lack of mysticism and his clarity of expression, which became important to the Acmeists (in contrast to the reigning Symbolists), influenced many Russian poets, in particular Vladislav Khodasevich and to some extent Boris Pasternak.
Biographical information about Annensky, p.6, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).
Rambling At The Bridge Head 
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