Awakening

O dreams, my dreams,

Where is your sweetness?

Where are you,

Joy of nightly fleetness?

They’re gone away –

My fancies, gay,

And now alone

In darkness grown

I, sleepless, stay.

A mute night hovers 

My bed above

In a flash lone

Turned cool and gone

Dreams of my love,

Like a tense crowd.

But still heart beats

The longings’ sound

And catches bits

Of dreams around.

Love, hear my plea,

Hark to my prayer:

Send back to me

Your visions, fair,

And by morn sky,

Again enchanted,

Let . . . Let me die

Still unawaken’d.

Aleksandr Pushkin

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver

(Picture: Waking, Walking, Singing, in the Next Dimension, Morris Graves)