На главную | Поиск
Вы находитесь в Хранилище файлов Белорусской цифровой библиотеки
Osip Mandelstam. Tristia (tranlsation by Ilya Shambat)
---------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright Osip Mandelstam
© Copyright english translation by Ilya Shambat (ilya_shambat@yahoo.com)
Date: 30 Jan 2001
Origin: "Kamen. Tristia"
---------------------------------------------------------------
I have a body - what with it to do,
So one and so my own? I wish I knew.
That I can breathe for quiet joy and live,
To whom am I, for this, my thanks to give?
I am the gardener and flower one,
In darkness of the world I'm not alone.
On glass of the eternal one can see
The signs of breath and of the warmth of me.
Impressed on it is vision of the wise
Unrecognizeable from recent times.
Be washed away the momentary mire -
The miracle of light will not expire.
x x x
She has not taken her first sigh -
She is the word and music both -
And thus of all that's made of growth
A timeless and eternal tie.
Tenderly heave the breasts of sea
But like a madman day will roam
O'er pallid blossoms of sea foam
In vase of lapis lazuli.
My lips acquire at time of birth
The ghastly silence of conception
Like notes of crystalline perfection
Free of the violence of earth
Remain as foam, O Venus dreaming,
And words to music do return
And heart, at heart's own shame do burn,
Fused with the basis of all being!
x x x
An inexpressible despair
Two giant pupils opened wide,
A vase of flowers rose beside
And threw her crystals into air
The room was filled three meters deep
With dreaminess - hello sweet balm!
That such a liliputian realm
Could have consumed so much ! ! of sleep.
A bit of wine a bit of cake -
A bit of sunny May despite -
And thinnest fingers snowy white,
Alive at last, have snapped awake.
x x x
A snowmound cleaner than the air,
Crystal more see-through than the glass
A turquoise brooch adorned with brass
Carelessly tossed upon a chair.
A cloth made drunk of her own glow
Caressed by tenderness of light
Experienced the summer bright
As though it were the winter snow.
And if through diamonds made of ice
Frosts of eternities were streaming
Here is the flutter of the dreaming
Fast-living blue-eyed dragonflies.
x x x
Blackened wind weaves patterns hollow
Under barely breathing leaves
And a trembling little swallow
In dark skies a circle weaves.
Quietly argue in the heart
Dear, dying, mine despite,
The impending dusk apart
Of an ebbing ray of l! ! ight.
And above the woods of dusk
Has arisen copper moon;
Why so little song, I ask,
And such silence in the lone?
x x x
Why is the soul so lyrical
And so few are the names I love
And the ready rhythm but a miracle
Like Aquillon from above?
He will raise clouds of dust in a hurry
He will leaf through the paper stack
And he will not come back -- or maybe
As another he will come back?
Winds of Orpheus are enfolding -
You will leave for the sea and sky -
And, the world not created holding,
I forgot the superfluous "I".
In a make-believe grove I have wandered
And into an azure cave delved..
Am I really real, I ponder,
And death will claim my true self?
x x x
Perhaps you not need me not this minute,
Night; from sea foams of the world -
A shell without a pearl within it -
Upon your shores I have been hurled.
With mists the ocean you embellish
And speechlessly you sing as well;
But you will love, and you will cherish
The pretense of a useless shell.
On ocean sands you lie next to her
In misty haze you dress her well
And with tight roping you tie to her
An oversized and brazen bell.
And then the seashell, fragile, empty,
Just like a heart that beats in vain
You fill with sea foam's whispers plenty,
With fog with wind and with light rain.
x x x
Sight of you, so tormented and broken,
In the fog I knew not to descry.
"Goodness me" by error I had spoken
Thinking not to say this in reply.
Name of god, just like a songbird screaming,
Took a flight right out of my chest.
Straight ahead the fog is densely steaming
And behind me is an empty nest.
x x x
Cold proportions in a damp forest
Sow white light on a summer day
In my heart I am carr! ! ying sadness
A bird grayer than gray.
What to do with a bird that is wounded?
She went silent, then died as well.
From a fogged-over belltower
Someone has stolen the bell.
And here stands the silent
Muted and orphaned height
Like a tower white and empty
In foggy and quiet night.
Morning so endlessly tender
Semi-daylight and semi-sleep
Oblivion is incessant
Thoughts endlessly creep..
x x x
The dusk of autumn -- just like rusted metal
Holds tight the flesh and eats through it like air;
That falls like all temptation and Cresus's capital
Before the razor blade of your despair,
My God! Like by a dancing snake I'm falling
Exhausted, and before her I am meek;
My soul's salvation I am not extolling
The reason or the muse I do not seek.
Enough untying with my wits or essence
A finely woven yarn of smart replies
There are no words for laments and confessions,
Heavy and shallow is my cup of lies.
Why do you breathe? On stones you will be dancing,
Sick python you, then curling in a ball;
Next moment swing and twist as if romancing,
And instantly in expiration fall.
And uselessly the day of execution,
Agape at all the sound and all the sight,
I listen as has fearlessly come completion,
The screech of metal and the wind's dark might!
x x x
Today is an ominous day:
Grasshoppers singing is down
And shadow of rocks far away
Is darker than funeral gown.
There's jingle of shimmering beams
And screams of crows grown wise,
I dream terrible dreams
Moment past moment flies.
Move skeins of events apart
Break through a tectonic plate
An anthem of rage impart
The copper of secret hate!
The pendulum on the clock
Of souls is strict, swinging o'er,
And zealously sounds the knock
Of fate on forbidden door.
x x x
I feel a fear that I cannot defy
In presence of the secretive above.
Like swallow I am happy in the sky
And loftiness of towers I love
It seems as though the ancient overpass
Over abyss on bending beams that groan
I hear. A snowball grows and gathers mass,
Eternity sounds on the hours of stone!
When would it be! But it is not my role
To dance on faded leaves and scream and hiss
And sadness sings in me without control -
I feel an avalanche in heaven's bliss!
And in the bell tower you can find my soul
But music will not save from the Abyss!
x x x
No, not the moon, luminous clock face
Shines from the sky, and what is my disgrace,
That I can feel the weak star's pallid force?
And loathsome to me is Batyushkov's rhyme:
They asked him here once what was the time
Eternity, he told them in response.
x x x
I cannot stand the rays
Of banal stars at night
Greetings, my madness old,
Gun tower's searing height.
Become a whirling stone
A cobweb become instead:
The empty heaven's chest
Wound with a thinning thread.
My time will come as well
Spreading the wings as I ought
But whereverfrom comes
Arrow of living thought?
Exhausting my way or my time
I'll be back again here;
There I could not love,
Here to love I fear.
x x x
I take no joy in the pleasures of the strife
And nature is a graying dot today
And only in light drunkenness I may
Experience the colors of my life.
The wind is playing with a cloud immersed
An anchor falls to bottom of the sea
And breathless like a canvas under me
Soul overhangs abysses of the cursed.
But I adore casino on the sea
The foggy window swinging avidly
On rippling cloth a ray of sun shines through
Surrounded by water green and blue
When like a rose a glass of wine is full
I see the flapping wings of a seagull!
x x x
Let's head to village of the Tsar
Where drunken, swept by wind and free
Young men are smiling right at me
Riding on horseback high and far.
Let's head to village of the Tsar!
Parks, castles, stables in a row
And on the trees are lumps of snow
And to the shouts -- "be well, hotshots"
The sounds "be well" ring back like shots -
Parks, castles, stables in a row.
One-story houses wide and far
Where generals of single mind
Shorten their lifetimes going blind
Reading Dumas and "Nieva":
Mansions -- not houses -- wide and far.
Train whistles. Riding in, a knight,
In glass pavilions full of light
A sword behind him sternly dragging
Officer leaves the cabin, ragging:
I do not doubt this is a knight!
And man is coming home yet --
Into the realm of etiquette,
A fear-instilling chariot
A grey-haired fraulein on the spot
Knows, man is coming home yet...
x x x
All day long the autumn's dampened air
In confoundment and angst I have inhaled.
I would like a supper - and the stars are
In a blackened purse and gold and pale!
And as with a yellow fog o'ergrown,
I descend into a tiny hole;
Nowhere such a restaurant have I known
Nor such company can I recall.
Petty bureaucrats, Japanese dealers,
Theologians of a foreign trust..
On the porch a man is feeling dollars
And they all are drunken to the last.
Be so kind to me, and change my money.
I am asking him persistently --
Only do not give me paper money,
I can't stand the crumpled bills of three.
What to do with all this drunken crowd?
How have I lucked in here, I enjoin?
If I have the right, I ask out loud,
Won't you change for me my golden coin?
x x x
It's dawn, sirens are wailing,
Seven a.m.
You that appear like Verlen,
Wake up old man!
Eyes childish, angling,
Green fire makes ash;
Upon the neck is hanging
A colored sash.
He curses, mutters, mumbles
Words lost within;
He wants to make confession
But first to sin.
A disappointed worker
A bitter one
The eye, beat up in melee,
Shines like the sun.
Thus having followed Sabbath,
He drags his feet:
Happy privation stares
From every street.
At home, flying with curse words
And white with rage,
A harsh wife meets and screams at
The drunken sage.
x x x
Above the federal buildings' yellow gown
A hazy flurry circles far and wide
Within the sled the coachman sits down
And with broad gesture hides his coat inside.
Ships fall asleep. And in the evening, rocking,
Thick cabin windows fill to brim with light.
And monstrously -- just like a fortress docking --
Russia is breathing heavily at night.
On the Nieva stand hundred embassies;
Admiralty, the sun, and silence glare.
The state's tight shackle harshly on us sits,
Poor like an uncouth bodice made of hair.
Hard is the journey of the Northern snob -
Eugene Onegin's well-clichи'd despair;
On Senate square are mounds of fallen snow
A bonfire's smoke, and chill of steel made bare.
The ducks are sipping water, and the gulls
In waving folds of sea are gently lurking
Where, selling lumps of beef or tender rolls,
Like opera singers peasant men are walking.
Into the fog a row of birds is flying:
Self-loving! ! , modest march can't wait.
That goof Onegin, poverty decrying
Is breathing gasoline and cursing fate.
x x x
Foreigner sits in a stifling tavern.
In the hour when all seems dead,
Leaving behind the dullard drunkards
I walk out and clear my head.
Courage of the midnight women
And the crazy stars' cold might,
And a tramp is begging money
For a room to spend the night.
Who, please tell me, in this moment
With the grape my mind will dull,
If the dock is work of Peter
Copper horseman, granite skull.
I hear signals from the fortress
I feel warmth drift from the sea.
Shots of cannon through the cellars
Have been ringing probably.
And much deeper than the ringing
Of that inflamed head on me
Are the stars, stark conversation,
And a Nieva westerly.
x x x
On Sunday walk near Protestant cathedral
I came across a funeral in motion
The absent-minded passerby I noticed
Put all of them in a severe commotion
The foreign language did not reach my ear
And only a thin whiplash shone like new
And then the thoroughfare on holiday
Reflected lazy horseshoes in rear view.
And in elastic darkness of the chariot
Where sadness, hypocrite, hid her face,
Wordless and tearless, lost for hellos
A vase of autumn roses interlaced.
Foreigners followed in a black procession
And tear-drenched dames were walking in their stead
Blushed cheeks under a brooch, and with direction
The horseman ruled above them: Straight ahead!
Whoever you have been, deceased Lutheran,
Lightly they buried you and lightly sang.
The eye was fogged as by a decent tear
And with reserve above you church bells rang.
And then I thought: I need not proselytyze.
We are not prophets, not preachers if I may,
We don't like heaven, hell we do not fear,
We shine like candles in the middle of the day.
x x x
1.
Hagia Sofia -- here has stopped and stared
The Lord the Judge of people and the tsars!
Your dome, as an eyewitness once described it,
As if by chains is hanging from the stars.
2.
To all a shining light -- age of Justinian,
When to steal off for foreign gods unseen
Dedicated Diana the Ephesian
These seven hundred marble columns green.
3.
To what aspired your generous creator,
When high in spirit and in reason both,
He laid his instruments upon the ground
And pointed them directions east and north?
4.
The temple shines, in the world's aura bathing,
And forty windows -- triumph of the light;
On sails under the dome the four archangels
Finest of all and basking in delight.
5.
This building will outlast people and ages
So wise and spherical and nobly built
And incandescent weeping of the angels
Will not corrode away the darkened gilt.
x x x
1.
Where Roman magistrate judges the foreign man
Basilica stands joyful and the first;
Like Adam once, spreading his nerves to heaven,
A light and cross-shaped bridge with muscles bursts.
2.
But will reveal itself the hidden plan!
Here might of granite arches took good care
That loaded massive walls were good to stand
And ram-like daring overpass stood bare.
3.
A desert labyrinth, uncharted forest,
A mindful chasm across the gothic soul,
Egyptian might and Christian modesty
Oak and kingdom to adorn the hall.
4.
But what is more important, Notre Dame,
Your monstrous ribs I studied to impart
And oft I thought: from harshness and from blame
Someday I will also make fine art.
x x x
"How luxury of these silverware and lace
Is loathsome to me in my disgrace
In the stone Tresene
A famous sorrow will be
Stairs in the king's name
Will grow red from shame
Black sun will rise above
A mother in love"
"Oh if the hatred only in my chest had boiled"
"But recognition from my lips recoiled"
"Ethedra burns with a black flame in broad daylight
A funeral torch burns in broad daylight
Fear your mother, Hippolitus,
Ethedra the night guards you in broad daylight"
"With black love I blotched the sun's face
Death will pour my ash from a white vase."
"We fear, we do not dare
Help relieve the king's despair.
Hearbroken with Theseus,
Night attacked him too
We, with a funeral song
Send the dead along
Passion sleepless and wild
Will have the black sun reviled."
x x x
1
A word of peace, rejected, stands
At start of an accursed era;
There's light inside a darkened cavern
And ether of the foreign lands;
Ether, of which we just could not,
Of which to breathe we did not want;
With voice of goats, deep and gaunt,
Priests are singing, hairy lot.
2
While goatlings and steer both
On foggy pastures were delaying
And friendly eagles were relaying
From shoulders of the sleepy rocks
German fed eagles on the rock
An Englishman a lion revered
And Gallic stallion appeared
From out the mantle of a cock.
3
And now behold, the wild sage
Has grasped the steeple of Heracles,
And then the soil was rid of sparkles,
Black and ungrateful like old age.
I'll take a dry stick in my palms
And wring from it a spark of fire,
Let into stream of night expire
The beasts aroused by my charms.
4
The cock, the lion, the brown-thin! !
Eagle and the tender bear --
We'll build a cage before the war
And warm with fire the animal skin.
And wine of time I also sing
The source of the Italian fable
As in the pre-aryan cradle
Tongues Slavic and Germanic ring.
5
You aren't too lazy, Italy,
To shake the chariots of Rome,
With gargling of domestic fowl
From bird-coop having flown free?
And you, the neighbor, don't play rough:
The eagle here sits mean and hyped
What if for you and all your type
A heavy stone is not enough?
6
In animal-coop the beasts now reign,
We will get calmer for much longer,
And in its fullness will gush Volga,
As lighter water flows through Rhine.
And a wise man from days of yore
To foreigner will pay his honor
Like demi-god, in whirling fervor,
Dancing with river on her shore!
x x x
In multitude of choir polyhymnal
All tender churches sing in their own voice
And ! ! in stone arches of Uspenskaya cathedral
My eyebrows in still higher arch rejoice.
And from the pedestral of the archangel
I watch the city at a wondrous height
In Acropolis sadness has deranged me
For Russian name and Russian beauty's sight.
That we of wind-town dream it is no wonder,
Where pigeons reign upon the hot blue beams
Where blackness sings Orthodox churches' wonder,
Florence in Moscow so tender seems
And the five-headed Moscow cathedrals
With soul Italian and Russian both
Remind me of Aurora's reappearance
With Russian surname and draped in fur clothes.
x x x
Upon a horse-sleigh laid to brim with straw
And covered barely with hides and birch,
We rode around the lumbering Moscow
From Sparrow Hills to a familiar church.
On Uglich street the kids are playing babki
And from a stove exudes bread's sweet smell
Through street without a hat they take me
Three candles burn in tower near a bell.
Not just three candles burned, but three encounters,
One of them God himself had known
Forth did not happen -- and the Rome still further -
And never did he love the ancient Rome.
The sled was diving into blackened snowdunes
And from the darkness people poured like weeds.
Thin peasant men and hateful-looking women
Right at the gate were separating seeds.
The distance, wet, had blackened with birds' trails,
And hands tied down inside the sleigh grew tired.
They drive the prince -- the body numbs and pales -
And then they set the orange straw on fire.
x x x
I
When, little straw, you lie in giant bedroom
And, sleepless, wait, that solemn, true and high,
Heavy and calm -- what could be more despairing --
Forever on you will descend the sky -
A whistling straw, a dry straw, a straw empty,
You drank death to the brim and made it raw.
A lifeless straw broke dear and yet so tender:
No, not Salome, no, it was but a straw.
In sleepless hour all objects grow in scale
As if in numbers few -- it is so quiet --
In mirror pillows flash, a little pale,
And in round haze the bed reflects at night.
No, not a straw in atlas of great power,
In giant room over Nieva's black streams,
Twelve months are singing of the dying hour,
And pale blue ice storm through the air steams.
The breath of triumphing December rises
As if heavy Nieva were in the room.
No, not a straw, not that which the man despises:
I've learned you, blessed words, Ligeia, doom.
II
I‘ve learned you, blessed words, that man despises,
Ligeia, Seraphita, Straw, Lenore,
In giant bedroom heavy Nieva rises
And blue blood gushes from the granite floor.
Over Nieva December shines white light.
Twelve months are singing of the dying hour.
No, not a straw in atlas of great power,
Instills a slow and tortuous respite.
There lives in me December's own Ligeia
Whose love sleeps in sarcophagus and burns,
And you, my little straw, perhaps Salome,
Were killed by pity and will not return.
x x x
"I lost a little brooche I used for grooming
On shores of the Nieva, I know not where.
I pity a majestic Roman woman" -
You uttered this to me in near despair
But what's the point, you gorgeous Georgian lady,
Of shaking coffin's ashes from the sky?
One fluffy snowflake, its beauty fading,
Melted upon the lashes of your eye.
And then you bowed the neck so short and tender.
There is no brooche -- no Roman lady more.
I pity the dark-bodied Tinotina --
A Rome for girls upon the Nieva's shore.
x x x
Hellenes were readying for war
Over a gorgeous island Salamin.
Overtaken fully by the foe
From Athens' harbor it was seen.
And now the friends and islanders
Fill our ships with their toil.
Englishmen did not crave
Sweetness of Europe's soil.
O Europe, you, the new Hellene,
Guard Pereas and Acropolis.
We don't need presents from the island,
A forest of unwelcome ships.
x x x
I
I'm feeling chilly. The transparent spring
Dresses Petropolis in greenish down
But, like a jellyfish, Nieva's blue waves
Revulse me slightly and bid me calm down.
Upon the shores of this great northern river
The automobiles with headlights head out far
Dragonflies soar and steely-winged bugs shiver,
Above us mingle golden heads of stars.
But not one star will murder probably
The heavy emerald waters of the sea.
II
In the Petropolis of shades we will expire
Prosepina reigns above us in her power
With every breath partaking dying air,
Closer to death with every passing hour.
The goddess of the sea, mighty Athena,
Do please take off the giant stone attire.
In the Petropolis of shades we will expire.
In this place reigns not you, but Proserpina.
x x x
1
In Sunday marvel disbelieving
We walked through cemetery stones
The land all over as you know
Reminds me of these hills at dawn
Where Russia tears itself free
Over a black and deafening sea.
2
From monastery mount
Meadow runs long and still.
I wish not head south
From wilds of Vladimir.
But in this darkened, wooden
And ugly country rubble
To stay with drunken nun
Means only trouble.
3
I kiss the suntanned elbow
And waxen forehead skin.
I know -- under tanned yellow -
It still is white and thin.
I kiss the place where bracelet
Has left a stripe of pale.
Taurida's flaming summer
Creates such miracle.
4
How soon did you grow tanner
And came to mass to bow
You kissed the cross forever
Grew proud in Moscow
To us remains but naming:
Until the end
Take from my palms forever
The holy sand.
x x x
This night has gone beyond redemption
And it is daylight where you dream.
Today the black sun has arisen
Over Jerusalem.
Sun that is yellow is still scarier.
Goodnight, goodnight,
Jews have interred my mother's remnants
In the temple of the light
And without a divine blessing
And without a priest's eye
Judeans in a light temple
Sang her ashes to the sky.
And then over my mother
Voices of Israelites rung
I awoke inside my cradle,
Shining with a blacker sun.
x x x
"To this the Senate serves as witness -
Such actions do not die"
Smoked a cigar and tucked his gown,
Chess players nearby.
Honorable sleep he changed for wood
From deep Siberian wilds unbroken
And a forgotten taste at poisoned lips
The truth of bitter world thus having spoken.
For first time German oaks rustled leaves
And in the shadows Europe weeps and begs
And on triumphant angles of the curve
Black stallions also stood upon hind legs.
It happened that in glasses blue wax burned
And with the sound much like a samovar
A girlfriend spoke quietly in turn,
The freedom-loving Rheinian guitar.
The living voices still scream and cry
About the citizen's sweet liberty
But victims do not wish the open sky
But rather work and constancy.
All has been mixed, and nobody can hear
That it is getting colder every day
All has been mixed, and it is sweet to hear:
Russia, Lethe, and Lorelei.
x x x
1
So far away is daffodils'
Transparent-graying spring
While in this minute's presence
Sand rustles, and wave rings
But here my soul has entered
Persephone's light charms
In kingdom of the dead there are
No tanned and gorgeous arms
2
Why do we trust the boat
With coffin urn's dead weight
And over amethyst waters
Black roses celebrate
My soul strives through ether
Beyond Cape Meganom
Black sail returns from there
Carrying funeral gloom.
3
How fast the clouds are running
Unlighted and so soon
And black rose leaves are flying
Under this windy moon
And bird of death and weeping,
Drags in a mourning stern
Huge flag of reminiscence
Behind a cypress stern.
4
The fan of summers opens
With sadness in my hand
When with a dark weeping
Amulet is buried in the sand
My soul aims to that country
Beyond Cape Meganom
And black sail is returning
Carrying funeral gloom.
x x x
When on the squares in silence
We slowly lose our minds
Cruel winter offers to us
The cold and clean rhine wine
It gives in silver bucket
The Valhalla's white wine
And of a northern man
It shiningly reminds.
But northern rocks are rougher
On joy they don't insist
And northern wilds are fonder
Of amber, fire and feast.
They dream of Southern air
And magic foreign sky
And still the stubborn girlfriend
Won't even give a try.
x x x
Among the priests a young Levite
As morning sentinel for long remained
Judean night grew denser over him
And ruined temple stood in bitter pain
He spoke: The yellow of the sky is menace
Run, Jews, over Euphrates it is night.
And old men thought: We should not take the blame here.
This joy of Judea, this black and yellow light.
He was with us, as on the riveshore
We draped the Saturday in precious linen
And with a seven-branched candelabra lit
Jerusalem's night and essence of nonbeing.
x x x
1
A river of golden honey from bottle was pouring
So long and so thick that the hostess muttered and shook:
Here, in sad Taurida, where it does not get boring,
We came to through fortune -- and over the neck gave a look.
2
Bacchus's services everywhere, as if in the whole weathered world
There were dogs and janitors only. Walk-- and no one will notice.
And like heavy barrels the days, calm and temperate, rolled.
From far in the mountains a voice: "You won't answer, or know this."
3
We entered a giant brown hall when the teas had been done,
With eyelids like curtains the windows were sealed over
We walked past white columns to look at the grapes in the sun
Where with air like glass strands the sleepy mountains did shower.
4
I spoke: Line of grape, like an ancient battlefield lives
Where curly-haired horsemen battle in circular order
The stony Taurida remembers the science of Greece
Red rows ten men each with bright golden cover sealed over.
5
And in a white room, silence stands like a hiding wall,
Smells are of vinegar, paint, and fresh wine from down under.
Remember, in a Greek house the wife is beloved by all,
Not Helen but -- for as long as she wove - another.
6
Golden fleece, where are you, golden fleece --
All day long as the storm were rising the heavy sea waves
And leaving the ship, having labored the canvas at seas,
Odysseus coming back home, full of time, full of space.
x x x
The wooden organ did not roar this evening.
The cradle song of Schubert to us sang
The windmill blew and in the hurricane's singing
Laughing blue-eyed intoxication rang.
The world of ancient song is green and brown,
The world of ancient song, young for all age,
Where nightingale elms' towering crowns
The forest rocks with fierce and beastly rage
And night's return, so terrible and mighty,
That song is wild and deep just like black wine
This poltergeist is but a visage empty
That, thoughtless, knocks upon the windowpane.
x x x
Your fabulous enunciation,
Like whistling of a bird of prey,
Creates a true representation
Of silken eyelids, I dare say.
"What" -- and the head has fallen
"Why" -- I am asking you
And far away the leaves are calling:
We live upon this planet too.
So let them say that love is flighty -
Flightier hundred times is death.
The soul is striving still and mighty,
Our lips fly toward it with each breath.
And in your whisper, so much silk,
And so much air, and so much light,
That as if blinded we both drink
The sunless brew of windy night.
x x x
The essence of farewell I have extracted
From hatless laments of the nighttime hour
As steer chew cud, and waiting grows protracted,
And city vigil is in final hour -
And I recall the rooster night that year
When lost in doleful journey for too long
Into the void the tear-drenched eyes did peer
And woman's cry mingled with muse's song.
Who yet again can say farewell, unknowing
What longing waits for us and what despair,
What good is it to judge the rooster's crowing
When fire has scorched the Acropolis bare;
And on the somewhere dan of some new lifetime,
While in the shade the steer still calmly stall,
Why does the rooster, herald of new lifetime,
Flap his flamboyant wings on city wall?
And yet I love the way fate weaves this gown:
The shuttle runs, the spindle turns anew,
And straight ahead, look now, for like swan's down
The barefoot Delia is flying right at you!
Oh, of a life is but a shoddy structure
When tongue is starved so utterly for light!
All was before, all will repeat then rupture
And only recognition brings despite.
Thus it will be: A figurine, transparent,
Stands on a porcelain that's clean and wide,
And like a snow-white pelt of winter ferret
A girl leans over wax and looks inside.
Ours not is to divine the Greek Erebus:
Wax is to her what bronze is to her mate.
Our dice falls only in the field of battle;
With divination women seal their fate.
x x x
1
Upon Pieria's great stone cascades
The muses were conducting their first choir
That just like bees, the blind musicians made
Gift of Ionian honey from their lyres.
And a young woman's convex forehead
Beamed emanations from the heaven once
That the archipelago's tender coffins
Would open for the far-off great-grand-sons.
2
The springtime stomps across Ellada's meadows
The rainbow-booted Sappho runs along
Cicadas ring as if with tiny hammers
And interweave like tendrils with sweet song.
The carpenter has built a giant tower,
For wedding day he suffocated hens
And for the shoes the clumsy cobbler
Has tore to pieces all the five steer skins.
3
Unhurried and unkempt is turtoise-lyre
Like legless creature barely crawling past
She lies under the sunshine of Epirus,
The golden stomach warming not-too-fast
Well, who in such a shape will care for her,
Who'll turn her over while she sleeps at night?
In dreams she is awaiting for Terpander
Having foreseen the drying fingers' flight.
4
Cold dew is feeding oaks with gentle ease
The grass without grooming speaks her view,
Honeycomb falls to the delight of bees
Oh, holy isles, exactly where are you,
Where broken bread is never eaten,
Where there is only honey, wine and milk,
The fiddle's labor does not turn the heaven,
And languorously turns the fortune's wheel.
x x x
1
Let's head to other places, other science,
Where dinner is kebab and cornish hen,
Where a placard showing breeches in defiance
Gives knowledge of the tastes of local men.
A man's tuxedo -- headless striving, fearless,
The flying barber's screaming violin
And mesmerizing iron -- is appearance
Of heaven's laundries and the heavy grin.
2
Here women grow old in stockings, yet
Think of strange apparel, it so seems,
And admirals in angular berets
Look like the Queen Sheherezada's dreams.
There is some grape, sun gleams from far away
And a fresh wind relentlessly blows sterner.
Swimming is hard, but stars remain the same
In the vicinity of Baghdad and of Smirna.
x x x
1
In crystal swampland there is such a violence!
Beyond, Sienian mountains stand sky-clad,
Gothic cathedrals of the rocks gone mad
Hang in the air, where there is fur and silence.
2
From hanging staircases of the kings and prophets
Organ descends, filled with the holy ghost,
Barking of German shepherds, fierce and lost,
The shepherds' mutton and the judges' outfits
3
Here earth is motionless, and in her castle
I drink the Christianity's dear cold air
I trust in truth and in the psalmist's prayer,
In keys and fence of churches of Apostle.
4
Which line could have passed on the Crystal vase
Fastened within an ether of high notes:
Like song of Palestine the goodwill floats
From Christian Mountain through a transfixed space.
x x x
Nature is Rome, and is reflected there.
We see images of citizen's parades
Like in blue circus, in transparent air,
On forum of the fields and forest's collonades.
Nature is that same Rome, and once more
We do not need to worry Gods in guilt,
From bestial entrails to divine of war,
To pray that slaves be quiet and stones be built.
x x x
Only children's books to read,
Only children's thoughts to debate,
To spread far all that is great,
From deep sadness to rise and heed.
I am deadly tired of life,
I won't take from her any more,
But I love this earth so poor,
For another has not arrived.
In a far-away garden green-blue
On a simple swing I swung free
And high and dark fur tree
I remember in foggy spew.
x x x
Return into the lap of incest
From where you have descended, Leah,
That yellow dusk you have preferred
To golden sun of Ilion.
Go forward, not a hand will touch you,
To father's chest, when night is dead,
And let the night the incest-maker
Let drop your head.
But fateful change that lasts forever
Will take place in you all the same.
You will be Leah and not Helen -
Not, not because this is your name -
And not because it is much harder
Within the veins to pour king's blood -
No, you will love a Judean
Vanish in him -- and be with God.
x x x
Behold, this air, made drunk with haze
Upon the Kremlin's blackened square
Men swing rickety "world" in craze,
Elms smell of fear.
From wax cathedral statues wrung,
A forest of belltowers alone,
Like robbers without tongue
Vanished in grottoes made of stone.
And in print-strewn cathedrals,
Where it is dark and cold
Like in tender muddy amphoras
Russian wine plays unsold.
The marvelously round Uspenskiy,
Wonder in heaven's arches
And then the green Blagoveshenskiy,
And, it seems, suddenly lurches.
Archangelsky and Resurrection
Shine through like hand
And everywhere is the hidden burning
Fire hidden in sand.
x x x
1
In Petersburg again we come together,
As if Sun inside there we interred
And that for the first time and forever
We pronounced the blessed, thoughtless word.
In black velvet of a Soviet even,
In black velvet global emptiness,
Sing the darling eyes of blessed women,
And deathless flowers blossom and caress.
2
Like wildcat capital arches her back
Upon the bridge patrol stands in a line
An angry motor rushes through the dark
And like a cookoo-bird begins to whine.
I do not need a pass through night deferred
I do not fear the nightly watchmen;
For the blessed, thoughtless word
I will make prayer on a Soviet even.
3
The light theaterical whisper sounds
A women's sighing and a gentle charm
And deathless roses in giant mound
Lying upon Cyprida's gentle arm.
From boredom we are warming at a campfire,
Centuries will pass by without a harm,
And the light ashes gather and inspire
The happy blessed women's dear arms.
4
Here is a garden row that is red banner,
The chiffon rings luxuriously glow
Windup doll of army officer
Not for black souls and for monks gone low.
Well then, put out our candles with your finger,
Black velvet of world emptiness in one
The blessed women's shoulders are singing
And you will never notice the night sun.
x x x
On a pearl shuttle you spin
A thread of silk so fragile
Come forth, you fingers agile,
Lesson in spells begin.
Movements of arms about
Their ebbs and flows in flight
Upon some sunny fright
You cast a spell, no doubt
When a wide hand on fire
Like silk grows still and fades
Or else she runs toward shades
Or morphs into pink fire.
x x x
We have gone mad from endless jubilation
Wine in the morning, hangover at night.
Your blush, oh drunken plague without respite,
How to contain the needless celebration?
A ceremony of the shaking hand is tortuous
Kisses around the street run through the night
When river streams grow heavy with respite
And headlights burn like torches.
As for a fairy wolf we wait for death
That I will die at first I most fear,
For I possess a mouth that's red with fear
And hair that falls upon the eyes like sheathe.
x x x
Fever glimmers through time
Hours-grasshoppers are churning,
And dry stove whispers -
Red silk is burning.
Why to whet with teeth of mice
Bottom of a life worn thin;
Shuttle tied to a device,
Swallow and daughter spin.
On the roof the rain speaks clear --
Here black silk is burning,
This the cherry tree will hear
And forgive, to bottom of the sea returning.
Because I'm helpless here
And the innocent are being killed
I am in a nightingale fever
And the heart is warm still.
x x x
Destroyed by fire
My life turned dry
Not stone but tree now
I sing to sky.
It is both light and rough;
From single piece
Come fisher's oars
And oak pith.
Nail tight the overpass
With hammers swing free
Ring wooden heaven
Where this is easy.
x x x
Of hunchbacked Tiflis dreaming
Cesandry is in flow
On bridge with people teeming
Capital carpet-gleaming
And Kura screams below.
Over Kura there are perfumes
Where there is wine and pliv,
Blushing flask of the perfume
Is now ready to receive
Having already served the room.
Thick Cahetian red wine
It is pleasure to drink
There it's cold, there divine
Drink in pleasure, drink two times:
You don't need alone to drink.
In the tiniests of flasks
You will find comrade in bliss
Teliani if you will ask
Float in fog, and in a cask,
You will swim to Tiflis.
x x x
For 20 years an American woman
Must be off to far-away Egypt
Forswearing the Titanic's guidance
She sleeps on bottom of the crypt.
In America trumpets sing loud
And pipes rise of ruddy steel towers
And then give away to chilly cloud
Lips that have been dusted over with tar.
In the Louvre stands daughter of the ocean
Beautiful like poplar in her bliss
She ground sugar into dust with motion,
And like a squirrel climbs Acropolis.
Understanding not a single sentence
She is reading Faustus on the train.
It's a pity that Ludovik's presence
On the throne no more remains.
x x x
Sweetness and tenderness -- like sisters alike are your marks -
The wasp and the bee suckle honey then flutter as one -
Life ends, beach sand chills overnight, and heaven gets dark,
And carried away on black litter is yesterday's sun.
Ah, tender rosebush, delicate emanation!
To know what you are is far harder than mountain to climb!
I have but one problem remaining in this incarnation:
To lift from the shoulders of man ghastly burden of time!
I drink turbid air just like water with mildew diluted:
A visage appears in the sun, heart of darkness and clots:
Two roses that once were of earth but by man were polluted
Sweetness and tenderness, bound up in double knots!
x x x
1
Equally with all others
I want to serve you,
Drying from jealousy
My lips turned blue.
Word does not slake
A mouth dry from despair
Without you I am breathless
In fetid air.
2.
I am no longer jealous
But yet I want you, dear,
I carry me like sacrifice
To executioner,
And no I will not call you
Not love not glee;
The wild and foreign blood
Runs now through me.
3
Wait for one moment
And this I will tell you:
Not joy, but torment
I find in you.
And, like a sacrilege,
Bitten in frenzy
Your tender cherry mouth
Calls to me.
4
Return to me at last, love,
It's awful without you
Never more strongly
Have I felt you.
And in the midnight hour,
Asleep, awake,
I call your name out loud
Even as I shake.
x x x
1
A wraithful scene is glimmering
Weak choirs of shades remain
With silk has draped Melpomene
Her temple's windowpanes
In yard the frost bites dearly
Black chariots stand in row
People and objects are both curly
Street crackles with hot snow.
2
Bit by bit the servants pick apart
The abandoned heap of bear furs
A butterfly flies over and departs,
Plants of roses are draped in furs
There are cups of fashionable color
From the theater light sweat streams
On the street there is a gleam of covers
And in clouds rises heavy steam.
3
Horsemen have grown tired of their voices
And the night is black as if with coal.
Do not worry, darling Eurydice,
That our winter is unearthly cold.
Sweeter than the song of the Italians
Is the sound of my tongue to me,
For the sounds of harps from foreign countries
Clamor in it with great mystery.
4
Of the smoke reeks the poor mutton
With the mounds of snow the street is ringed
From a blissful songlike semitone
Flying right at us is the deathless spring.
That the aria would sound forever:
"To green meadows you will return"
And to our feet falls a living sparrow
On the snow that is so hot, it burns.
x x x
1
Luminous is meaning of the dreary
And Venetian life that's lived in vain
Here she looks at me with a smile chilly
Through the bluish windowpane.
2
Thinning air, blue veins through skin of arm
A green brocade and the white snow
From the coat they take out sleepy and warm
And on the cypress ambulance lay low.
3
And inside the buckets candles burn
As if pigeon flew into the shrine,
And a man is dying in his turn
In the theater and on night divine.
4
May no rescue come from foe or lover,
More than platinum the Saturn's ring weighs down.
Face is beautiful. Under black velvet cover
Stone of executioner stands alone.
5
Heavy, Venice, is your dress and belt,
There are mirrors in the cypress frames
Air is faceted. In bedroom mountains melt,
Of a blue dark glass nothing remains.
6
In the fingers of bottle or roses
Green, my dear, is Adriatic sea,
Why are you so quiet, Venetian hostess,
From luxurious death how do I get free?
7
The black Hesper flashes in the mirror,
All will pass. The truth is dark and dour.
Man is born. The pearl dies, barely clearer.
Susanna the elders must conjure.
x x x
It is a pity that the winter falls
Mosquitoes aren't around
But you allowed me to recall
Light-headed straw that's lying on the ground.
Dragonflies fly across the blue
Like swallow, circles the mode -
Is there a basket over you
Or pompous ode?
To advise I do not care
Excuses mean little.
The taste of cream is forever
And smell of orange peel.
You push at random from behind
Nothing gets worse
What to do: the most tender mind
Can fit the universe.
And you attempt with angry spoon
The yolk to stir.
It will get white, it will succumb
And still, a little more..
Everything teases, sings in you
Like roulade from Italy.
And a little cherry mouth
Asks for dry grape from me.
So do not attempt to be smart as that
In you there is minute
There is a shadow of your hat,
Venetian ball within it.
x x x
Here's cornucopia, just like a golden sun,
A gorgeous moment in the air lingers
If but to hold the world like apple in one's fingers -
Here will be heard only the Grecian tongue.
Triumphant zenith service to god's will,
Light in round cupolas grows in July,
That with full chest timelessly we would sigh
Of endless meadow where the time stands still.
And like eternal noon stands Eucharist -
All drink the cups, all play and sing aloud,
Before the eyes of all the cup of god
Pours with a gaiety that can't desist.
x x x
When Psyche that is life descends
After Persephone into transparent woods below
With a green branch and Stygian tenderness
Beneath her feet falls a blind swallow.
Ghosts crowd the fugitive and hurry
To meet the new arrival with a prayer
They twist their withered weakened arms before her
With misunderstanding and with near despair.
Souls are like women and their trifles love:
Some hold a mirror, some perfumes that fizzle:
There's leafless wood of voices from above
Dry lamentations fall in drops, like drizzle.
In light stampede not knowing where to start
Soul does not recognize transparent woods,
Breathes into mirror and tarries to impart
The copper pan and in it, foggy moods.
x x x
Take from my open hands for your delight
A bit of honey and a bit of sun
As willed to us the bees of Proserpina.
Not to untie again an unmoored boat,
And not to know a shadow shod in fur,
Nor yet to conquer fear of dreary lifetime:
To us remain but kisses in the night,
Fuzzy and shivering like little bees
That fall and die as they depart the hive.
They shimmer in transparent nigthtime breeze,
Their home is haunted forest of Taigetos,
They feast on mint, and honeycomb, and spacetime.
Take then my wild gift for your delight,
A simple wreath of withered little bees
That died as they changed honey into sun.
x x x
1
Brothers, let's celebrate the dusk of liberty,
The great and dusky year this Yule.
In boiling waters of the night like sea
The heavy wood has been submerged and pulls.
In dead years you arise over me
O sun, the people's judge and rule.
2
Let's celebrate the fated burden,
Which people's leader takes in tears.
Let's celebrate the dusky burden
Its load is unbearable and dear.
In whom there is a heart, time's burden
While your ship sinks, you will hear.
3
In battle legions we have bound
The swallows, and now
Sun is unseen, and nature all around
Chirps, sparkles, grows
Across dense net of dusk unbound
I cannot see the sun, and the earth flows.
4
But we will try: A giant, clumsy,
Fiddle-like turning of the wheel.
Earth flows. Get strong, men, don't be lazy
As with a plow the ocean's heel
We will remember in Lethean frenzy
That earth has cost us ten heavens still.
x x x
1
On fearsome height stands wandering fire
But is this glimmer of the stars espying?
Transparent star, wandering fire
Your brother, Petropole, is dying.
2
On fearsome height the earth's dreams burn and shatter
And a green star is flying.
Oh, if you are a star -- brother of earth and water --
Your brother, Petropole, is dying.
3
A monstrous ship upon a fearsome height
Wings outspread, is flying.
Green star, you, in a gorgeous plight,
Your brother, Petropole, is dying.
4
Transparent spring upon Nieva grown black
Has broken. Wax of immortality melts as if crying.
Oh, if you are a star -- Petropole, your dock,
Your brother, Petropole, is dying.
x x x
1
I have forgot the word that I had meant to say.
To palace of the shades returns blind swallow
Upon clipped wings with shadows to play.
Night's song is in oblivion sung below.
2
Immortelle does not bloom. I cannot hear bird's song.
Transparent are the mantles of night's horse herd
In a dry river empty shuttle swims along
No hearing among grasshoppers of the lost word.
3
Slowly the curtain grows, or temple yet,
Suddenly Antigone seems mad and lurches
Like a blind swallow falls toward my feet
With Stygian tenderness and with green branches.
4
O, if but to return the shame of see-through hands
And convex joy of dawning recognition,
I am afraid of weeping Aonids
Of fog, of ringing and of gaping apparition.
5
And to the mortal power is to love and seek
For them the sound through hands will pour
But I forgot the word that I had meant to speak
And fruitless thought returns to palace dour
6
Not of the same the shadow speaks in turn
The girlfriend, Antigone, the swallow..
And on the lips, like a black ice, burns
Memory of Stygian ringing from below.
x x x
For this that your arms I could not more tightly keep -
For this that your tender saltwater lips I've foresaken -
As much as abhorrent to me is this ruin half-asleep -
I must in Acropolis wait till the city awakens.
The Aegeans ready the horse in the darkness profound,
With sharp-toothed blades into cracks they invade and rupture
Dry rustle of blood in the ears simply would not die down
Of you not a whisper remains, not a sight, not a sculpture.
How could I have thought you'd return to me, how did I dare?
Why did I abandon so early without a warning?
The rooster had not sang his song, nor the hills been laid bare,
And into the woodwork the axe had not torn yet this morning.
With transparent tears on the walls have appeared drops of sap
And city is feeling its forested ribcage with fire
Through valves blood has rushed into life and then turned on the tap
And three times to men have the mermaids called out of the mire.
Where is my dear Troy, where's the palace, the women's hall?
The tall starling-coop of King Priam is lying in shatters
And like a dry rain wooden arrows continue to fall
And different rain like a nutgrove arises in tatters.
The sting of last starfleck shall painlessly flicker away,
And morning will tap on the windowpane like a gray swallow,
And slowly the day, like a steer once awakened in hay,
Will rustle awake on sharp steps, and the light will follow.
x x x
Under a coxcomb of a milky white
Isaac has built a graying pigeon cage
Distaff mutters from gray quiet
And grade of air the heart can barely gauge.
There's wandering ghost of masses for the dead
Much wide sack cloth they carry out
And in shoddy drag-net of the darkness in its stead
Seven great cardinals tarry.
Upon warm altars smoke glows
And a priest exudes a liquid cry
Kingly peacemaker: there is clean snow
On the shoulders, and a wild porphyry.
Sophie's and Peter's Grand Cathedrals that withstood
Centuries; warehouses of light and air
Grain hangars of the universal good
And corn-kilns of new testament appear.
In the harsh troubled year, not to your side
The spirit drags across world's steps in peace
Wolf's trail of disaster reaches high and wide
He will not change over centuries.
.
Free is the slave that once has conquered fear
And beyond measure one has kept, through grief,
In deep cornbins, in chilly granaries
Last-modified: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 09:03:49 GMT
Проект Либмонстра, партнеры БЦБ - Украинская цифровая библиотека и Либмонстр Россия
https://database.library.by