Brilliant Poem

I do not want to live my life, like all,
Living like squirrels in a hamster wheel,
Walking around in circles, being slaves,
Afraid of storm and of the ocean waves.

I want to live uplifted like an eagle;
I want to live conceited like a Creole;
Smashing, threatening barriers, sliding by
Between the two "forbidden"'s intertwined.

I want to live, a wise and brilliant man
Of all his peers a century ahead
And yet in other measures, to exist
A fifty years behind my time at least.

I want to live, as it behooves to live
To him who knows to conjure and conceive
New notes from ancient ones and from the past -
I want to live the way life lives, at last!

By Igor Severyanin
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
https://sites.google.com/site/ibshambat