It's sad but true. Great poems are written in languages other than English. But at a time when you must eat breakfast in your car on the way to work while careening past fellow motorists at ungodly speeds so you won't be late for work again and explaining to your spouse on your cel lphone that you really would like to get it on more than once a month, and would, in fact, if you didn't have so much to do -- at a time like this -- who has the time to learn a second language, really? And just how much should you trust translations, anyway? Thankfully, technology has provided today's busy poetry devotee with a solution: internet translation tools. Want to read Rilke? Tsvetaeva? Rimbaud? Just type in a web address, and there you have it -- an English translation. You can thank Babelfish, one such miracle of modern technology, for the following translations.

     - MM.


Autumn
Rainer Maria Rilke

The pages fall, fall as from far,
as if gardens withered in the skies far;
they fall with negative gesture.

And in the nights the heavy earth
from all asterisks falls into the isolation.

We all fall. Deise hand falls there.
And andre regards: it is all.

And nevertheless is one, which keeps this
falling infinitely gentle in its hands.



New-Year
Marina Tsvetaeva

Happy New Year. by light/world. by edge. by roof!
First letter to you on the new
.Misunderstanding, that zlachnom.
(Zlachnom. ruminant) place loud, place sonorous
As eolian empty tower.
First letter to you with the yesterday's,
On which without you iznoyus',
The native lands, are now narrower. with one of
Stars... Law of withdrawal/departure and ring-off,
On which loved. by any
And nebyvsheyu. from the unprecedented.
To describe as about your did learn?
Not to zemletryasen'e, not avalanche.
Man entered. any. (loved.
You). Most sad of the events.
In the news and the days. Article give?
Where? In the mountains. (window in the fir branches.
Sheet.) Do not see newspapers indeed?
So article? No. But.... I please to free.
Aloud: it is difficult. Inward: not khristoprodavets.
In the sanatorium. (V to paradise hired.)
Day? Yesterday, the day before yesterday, I do not remember.
In Al'kazare you will be? I will not be.
Vlukh: family. Inward: everything, but not Judas.

With the attacker! (it was born tomorrow!)
To describe that it did make after learning about...?
Tss... It was specified. On the habit.
Life and death has long ago I taken into the quotation marks,
As deliberate--empty splety.
Nothing made, but something
It made, without the shadow and without the echo
Making!
Now. how it did go?
As it vomited and was torn as.
Heart? As on the trotters of Orel,
From the eagles, he said , not lagging,
Spirit seized. or to forest?
It is sweeter? Neither heights to that nor it is trigger
On the eagles it flew true Russians.
Who connection/communication is blood with that light/world:
It occurred in Russia. that light/world on this
It is ripe/mature. Fixed bound!
Life and death I pronounce with the smile,
Hidden. you will touch by your it!
Life and death I pronounce with the footnote,
By asterisk (night, by which the tea:
Instead of cerebral polushar'ya.
Starry!)
Not to forget, friend is my,
Following: that if the letter
Russians went instead of German.
That not because nowadays, allegedly,
Everything will descend, that the corpse (beggarly) will eat everything.
Not it smorgnet! and because that light/world,
Our. thirteen, in The the novodevich'em
She understood: not without and vse'-yazychen.

Here and I ask not without melancholy:
Already you do not ask as in Russian
It nest? 1 only, and all nests
Covering rhyme: star.

Otvekayus'? But such and the thing
It will not be located. from you to be distracted.
Each thought, any, du Of liyeber, 2
Style into you conducts. on no matter by what not it was
Sense (let Russian by relatives German
To me, all angelic by relatives!) as the places
To nest', where you are not, no there is: grave.
Everything as was not and everything as was.
Really about me not a bit not?
To okruzhen'e, Rayner, to samochuvstv'e?
It is imperative, without fail.
First vision of that moved
(it is implied, the poet
In the afore-mentioned) and the latter. planet,
Once only to you and given. as a whole.
Not poet with the dust, spirit with the body,
(to isolate. to insult both)
But you with you, you with you zh,
To be Zevesovym it does not mean best.
Castor. you with you. By pollux,
Marble. you with you, travkoy,
Not separation and not encounter. the rate
Confrontation: both encounter and the separation
The first.
To its own hand
As it looked (at the track. on it. ink)
With its it is as many (how much?) mile
By infinite since beznachal'noy
Heights above the level crystal
Inland. and other saucers.
Everything as was not and everything as it will be
And with me after the end of the suburb.
Everything as was not and everything as is already
That copied to the week
Excess! and where zh is still look--that,
Prioblokotyas' to the rim of lie,
From this. as not to that, from the same.
As not to long-suffering this.
I live in Bellevyu. From the nests and the branches
Town. After exchanging glances with the guide:
To bellevyu. Jail with the excellent form
In Paris. the hall of the chimera of gallic.
In Paris. and to a little further...
Prioblokotyas' to the ruby-colored rim,
As to you they are ridiculous (to whom) doljno to be,
(to me zh) they must be, from the height without the measure,
Our To bellevyu and Bel'devery!
I am moved. Detail. Urgency.
New year in the doors. For which, with whom I will be touched glasses
Through the table? Than? Instead of the foam. the cotton
Shred. Why? Well, it beats. and with what 4 here?
That to me to make in new-year noise
With this internal rhyme: Rayner. it died.
If you, this eye. it smerklos',
It means life, not life exists, death not death exists,
It means. tmimsya, to dopoymu upon the encounter!
There is neither life, there is no nor death. the third,
New. And for it (by straw
After covering by the seventh. twenty sixth
Going out. what happiness
By you to end, by you to begin!)
Through the table, boundless by eye,
I will be touched glasses with you by quiet Chalk
Stkla against stklo? No. not by the coarse ikhnim:
4 about you, sliyas' of those giving the rhyme:
The third.
Through the table I look at the cross of your:
How many places. za'gorodnykh, and the place
By za'gorodom! and it waves to whom
As not to us. bush? Places. specifically, our
And nich'ikh others! Entire sheet! Entire/all needle!
Places of your with me (your with you).
(that with you and to the mass meeting.
To speak?) that. places! and mes4qov- that!
But weeks! But the rain suburbs
Without the people! But the mornings! But in all together
And not na'chatogo by nightingales!

Correctly badly I see, since in the pit,
It is correct, better you see, since it is more than:
Nothing with you it left.
To that, so it is pure and so it is simple
Nothing, so on the arm and the increase/growth
To us. that also to enumerate not necessary.
Nothing, besides. do not await: from to the number
Emerging (unjust/incorrect from the stroke/cycle
Emerging!) and in whatever, as
Number. entered b?
Refrain is age long:
Nothing although by anything on something
Anything. although from a distance. shadow although
Shadows! Nothing, that: hour is that, day that,
House is that. even condemned man in the boot-trees
By pamat'yu given: mouth is that!
Or too they did examine means?
One only light/world is that from all that
Our there was as we themselves only reflection
Us. instead of entire this. entire that light/world.

With nezastroyenneyshey from the outskirts.
With the new place, Rayner, by light/world, Rayner!
From the provability by cape extreme.
With the new eye, Rayner, by hearing, Rayner.

Everything to you by the interference
It was: passion and friend.
With the new sound, the echo!
With the new echo, sound!

How often on the school stool:
What for the mountains there? What rivers?
Are good landscapes without the tourists?
Was not mistaken, Rayner. paradise. mountainous,
Thunderstorm? Not the claims of widow.
Not one indeed paradise, above it another indeed
Paradise? By terraces? I judge by Tatram.
Paradise cannot not by the amphitheatre
To be. (A the curtain above someone it is gone down...)
Were not mistaken, Rayner, god. growing
Baobab? Not gold Ludovik.
Not one indeed god? Above it another indeed
God?
How it is written on the new place?
However, you, there is. there is the verse: itself you there is.
Verse! As it is written in good to zhisti
Without the table for the elbow, the forehead for the brush
(handfulls)?
News, by customary type!
Rayner, you are glad at new rhymes?
Since correctly interpreting the word
Rhyme . that '. as not '. a whole series of the new
Rhymes. Death?
Ne'kuda: language is studied.
A whole series of values and accords
New.
To svidan'ya! To the acquaintance!
Let us meet. I do not know, but. let us rehearse!
With me- the very unknown earth/ground.
With the entire sea, Rayner, by entire by me!

Not to depart. scribble zarane.
With the the new zvukonachertan'em, Rayner!

In the sky. stairs, on it with the gifts...
With the the new rukopolozhen'em, Rayner!

So that not za'lili I hold by palm.
Above the Rhone and above Rarogn'a,
Above the explicit and continuous separation
To rayneru. Maria. To ril'ke. in the hands.

To bellevuye, on 7 February 1927

Enivrez You
Charles Baudelaire
(In the small prose poems)

It is necessary to be always drunk, all is there; it is the single question. Not to feel the horrible burden of the time which breaks leans your shoulders and you towards the ground, it is necessary for you enivrer without trêve.
But of what? Of wine, of poetry, or virtue to your own way, but will enivrez you!
     And so sometimes, on the steps of a palate, green grass of a ditch, you awake, already decreased or disappeared intoxication, ask the wind, vagueness, star, the bird, the clock; to all that flees, with all that groans, with all that rolls, with all that sings, to all that speaks, require what time it is. And the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, will answer you, it is the hour of enivrer; not to be the martyrized slaves of time, will enivrez you, enivrez you unceasingly of wine, poetry, virtue, with your own way.