I’m nothing to you, I mean zero.
I know, there’s nothing more to say.
And yet I love you still more dearly,
ecstatically and without mercy,
and like a drunk, I stumble, reel,
and loiter in a lightless alley,
insisting that I love you still –
no mercy, and ecstatically.
by Мария Сергеевна Петровых (Maria Sergeyevna Petrovykh)
(1959)
translated by Boris Dralyuk
I won’t give you up to death.
I will stand before her.
With my heart
I will shield
your heart.
If you see me
pale,
it is not from pain;
it is from joy
that you are invunerable.
by Мария Сергеевна Петровых (Maria Sergeyevna Petrovykh)
(1933)
translated by Robert Chandler
Words lying empty, without breathing –
that don’t know why they exist at all.
Words with no goal, words with no meaning,
that shelter no one from the cold
and haven’t fed a single soul.
Words of impotence – of the weak!
Words that don’t dare, too shy to speak.
They give no heat, they shed no light,
but, with an orphan’s grief, go mute,
not knowing they are mutilated.
by Мария Сергеевна Петровых (Maria Sergeyevna Petrovykh)
(1970s)
translated by Boris Dralyuk
Love me. I am pitch black,
sinful, blind, confused.
But if not you, then who else
is going to love me? Face
to face, and fate to fate.
See how stars shine bright
in the dark sky. Love me
simply, simply, as day
loves night and night loves day.
You have no choice. I am
pure night, and you – pure light.
by Мария Сергеевна Петровых (Maria Sergeyevna Petrovykh)
(1942)
translated by Robert Chandler
A complete rendition though this version uses shorter, irregular, lines in its translation.
It’s just how it is, it’s the way of the ages;
years pass away, and friends pass away
and you suddenly realize the world is changing
and the fire of your heart is fading away.
Once the horizon was sharp as a knife,
a clear frontier between different states,
but now low mist hangs over the earth –
and this gentle cloud is the mercy of fate.
Age, I suppose, with its losses and fears,
age that silently saps our strength,
has blurred with the mist of unspilt tears
that clear divide between life and death.
So many you loved are no longer with you,
yet you chat to them as you always did.
You forget they’re no longer among the living;
that clear frontier is now shrouded in mist.
The same sort of woodland, same sort of field –
you probably won’t even notice the day
you chance to wander across the border,
chatting to someone long passed away.
by Мария Сергеевна Петровых (Maria Sergeyevna Petrovykh)
(1957)
translated by Robert Chandler
Rambling At The Bridge Head 
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