Плачущий Сад (Weeping Garden) by Boris Pasternak

 Dreadful! It drips and it listens -
 whether it's all alone in the world
 crushing a twig like lace at the window,
 or is someone watching?
 
 Palpable, though, is the pressure
 of porous earth's taut swellings,
 and far off, audible as in August,
 midnight ripens in fields.
 
 No, no sound, no witness,
 Convincing there's no one there,
 back it goes to its game of rolling
 down roofs and across gutters.
 
 I'll lift it up to my lips and listen -
 whether I'm all alone in the world,
 ready to burst out in sobs if I need to,
 or is someone watching?
 
 Silence. Not a leaf moving.
 No dot of light, just weird
 gulps and splashings about in slippers,
 the lulls full of sighs and tears.
 
 
 By  Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к (Boris Leonidovich Pasternak)
 (1917)
 translated by Angela Livingstone 

A recital of the poem in Russian:

Below is the poem in it’s original Russian cyrillic form:

 
Ужасный! — Капнет и вслушается,
Все он ли один на свете
Мнет ветку в окне, как кружевце,
Или есть свидетель.

Но давится внятно от тягости
Отеков — земля ноздревая,
И слышно: далеко, как в августе,
Полуночь в полях назревает.

Ни звука. И нет соглядатаев.
В пустынности удостоверясь,
Берется за старое — скатывается
По кровле, за желоб и через.

К губам поднесу и прислушаюсь,
Все я ли один на свете, —
Готовый навзрыд при случае, —
Или есть свидетель.

Но тишь. И листок не шелохнется.
Ни признака зги, кроме жутких
Глотков и плескания в шлепанцах
И вздохов и слез в промежутке. 

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The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

 

by Ted Hughes (1930-1998)

from The Hawk In The Rain

A Bald-Headed Person Named Twig by Willard R. Espy

A bald-headed person named Twig

Once went for advice to a pig.

Said the pig, ‘Make some snares,

And catch a few hares,

And weave the hares into a wig.’

 

– by Willard R. Espy