tsvetayeva
The Best of Marina
Tsvetayeva
By Ilya Shambat
The most comprehensive translation of Marina Tsvetayeva in the English language, prepared for 110th anniversary of her birth. Translations from Russian original in chronological order. Includes classics and lesser-known poems, translated directly from Russian anthology. For inquiries, contact ibshambat@gmail.com.
To Mother
In the old Strauss waltz for the first time
We had listened to your quiet call,
Since then all the living things are alien
And the knocking of the clock consoles.
We, like you, are gladly greeting sunsets,
And are drunk on nearness of the end.
All, with which on better nights we're wealthy
Is put in the hearts by your own hand.
Bowing to a child's dreams with no tire.
(Only crescent looked in them indeed
Without you)! You have led your kids past
Bitter lifetime of the thoughts and deeds.
From the early age the sad one's close to us,
Laughter bores and home we left behind..
Our ship not in good times left the harbor
And it sails by will of every wind!
Azure isle of childhood is paling,
On the deck of ship we stand alone.
It appears, oh mother, to your daughters
You've left an inheritance of woe.
x x x
The street awakens. She looks, exhausted
With the mute windows' sullen eyes,
On sleepy faces, red from the cold,
That with thoughts chase the stubborn sleep away.
The blackened trees with rime are covered -
With trace mysterious of the night's fun,
In gleaming brocade sad ones are standing,
Just like the dead the alive among.
The gray coat mingles, trampled upon,
The forage-cup with a wreathe, a bored look,
And the red arms, pressed to the ears,
And the black apron with the tied books.
The street awakens. She looks, unpleasant
With mute windows' sullen eyes, it would seem.
To sleep, in a happy thought be forgotten,
What life seems to us, this is a dream!
Little World
Children - are staring of eyes so frightful,
Mischievous legs on a wooden floor,
Children - is sun in the gloomy motives,
Hypotheses' of happy sciences world.
Eternal disorder in the ring's gold,
Tender word's whispers in semi-sleep,
On the wall in a cozy child's room, the dreaming
Peaceful pictures of birds and sheep.
Children - is evening, evening on the couch,
In the fog, through the window, glimmer street lamps,
A measured voice of the tale of King Saltan,
Mermaid-sisters of seas from tales.
Children - is rest, brief moment of respite,
A trembling vow before God's eyes,
Children - are the world's tender riddles,
Where in the riddle the answer hides!
Before a Little Coffin
To Katherine Pavlovna Peshkova
Mother has painted the coffin brightly.
The tiny one sleeps in Sunday attire.
Onto the forehead no longer is falling
The light-brown hair;
A round comb no longer is pressing,
Having seen so little, of the child's head;
Only of joy knew
The heart of the kid.
For five years so happily lived she
Much played the deft arms!
Fantasies, fantasies mid lilies,
Nobody disturbed them.
The flowers seek a place nearer to her,
(She seems tight in her new bed).
The flowers know: Little Katya
Epitaph
L.A.T.
ON THE GROUND
"Hid in the corner, you look so stubborn,
We wait for long. Say, you agree?"
"Ah, I don't know. Leave me, mother!
Leave me. It's all the same to me!"
IN THE GROUND
"Is not the breath of a tired chest heavy?
In tight grave it's always dark, you see?"
"Ah, I don't know. Leave me, people!
Leave me! It's all the same to me!"
OVER THE GROUND
"Did I love passionately with my heart, too?
Evil - did it so anger thee?"
"O my good God, I agree completely!
I'm tired. It's all the same to me!"
Lady with Camelias
Your whole way with evil's shining coals,
Margaret, they all eagerly judge.
What's your fault? The body sinned as such,
Innocent you have retained your soul.
To all people it's the same, I know,
To all nodded with a blurry smile.
And with this sorrowful semi-smile
You have wept yourself long time ago.
Who will know? Whose hand will help along?
No exception to the rule, one thing entrances!
They eternally await embraces,
They eternally await, "I'm thirsty! Be my own!"
Day and night the bane of false confessions..
Day and night, tomorrow, and once more!
Spoke more eloquently than the word
Your dark glance, the martyr's dark expression.
The accursed ring is growing narrow,
On the goddess of the world avenges fate..
Smiling childishly, into your face
A young tender boy glances with sorrow.
The entire world is saved by love!
In but her salvation and defense is.
All's in love. O Margaret, sleep in peace.
All's in love. I'm saved because I've loved.
Terminal Silhouette
I know you not and in no way
I want to lose illusions starry
With such a face in holes most dreary
People are loyal to a ray.
All that the fate has marked for grave
Have such closed-off face instead.
You are a page that was not read
And no, you will not be a slave.
A slave with such a face? Oh no!
There is no error here by chance.
Your slender figure and your glance
Will be secret to many, I know.
A heavy bracelet of your hair
Under the thrown-over scarf
(You'd do with guitar or a harp)
And your pale face, as pale as air.
I know you not. And possibly
You're kind and moderate like all.
Maybe! May these be ravings all!
For only raving ones may be!
Perhaps the day is not so far
When I will fathom what's unseemly...
But thus to err - it is so relieving!
It is so easy yet to err!
Touching the scarf with a light hand,
There where the whistles shrilly blow.
This is the you that I will know
Where you just like a riddle stand.
In Paris
Homes reach the stars, the sky's below,
The land in smoke to it is near.
Inside the big and happy Paris
Remains the secretive despair.
The evening boulevards are noisy,
Gone are the sundown's final rays,
And there are couples everywhere
Trembling of lips, daring of eyes.
I'm here alone. To trunk of chestnut
It is so nice one's head to lean!
And like in the abandoned Moscow
In heart weep verses of Rostand.
Paris at night is sad and alien,
Dear to the heart is madness gone!
I'm going home, there's vial of sorrow
And tender portrait of someone.
There's someone's glance, sad and fraternal.
There's tender profile on the wall.
Rostand and the Reichstadtian martyr
And Sara - in sleep come they all!
Within the big and happy Paris
I dream of grass, of clouds and rain
And laughter far, and shadow near,
And deep just like before is pain.
Prayer
Christ and the Lord! I thirst for marvel
Now, here, as the day would start!
The life is like a book to me,
So let me die. Let me depart.
You're wise, and sternly "Now be patient,
Your time's not ripe," you will not say.
Yourself you gave me - too much now!
I thirst at once - for every way!
I want it all: with soul of gypsy
To run to plunder with a song,
To suffer for all near an organ,
To run to war, an Amazon;
To divine stars in a black tower
The kids through shadows to lead...
That yesterday would be a legend,
That each and every day be mad!
I love the cross, the silk, the helmet,
The minute's trace of soul of mine..
You gave me childhood - better than fiction
Now let me die at seventeen!
To Asya
Evening noise in the burning sunset
On twilight of winter day.
The third call. Hurry, remember me,
You that are going away!
Emerald wave is awaiting you,
Splash of an oar of blue,
To live our life underground, difficult,
Was not possible to you.
Well then, ahead, that our murky struggle
Into our ranks never calls,
If the transparent wetness appeals to you
Flight of the silver seagulls!
Give my regards to the hot, the brilliant,
Burning sun,
Your question pose to all strong and bright -
Answer will come!
Evening noise in the burning sunset
On twilight of winter day.
The third call. Hurry, remember me,
Books in Red Binding
From heaven of a childhood life
A farewell to me you're sending,
The ever-loyal dear friends
Within a red worn down binding.
On learning homework from school,
At once I ran to see you yet. "It's late" -
"Please, Mother, ten more lines" -
But happily she did forget.
The fires flicker in a lamp..
How nice it is to read at home!
To sounds of Greeg, Schumann and Kui
I learned about the fate of Tom.
It's dark.. the air is growing cold..
Tom's full of faith in Becky's joy.
Within the darkness of the cave
Wanders with torch Indian Joe..
A cemetery.. owl is screaming..
(I'm scared) And now through hassocks flies
The punctilious widow's foster-child,
Like in a barrel Diogenes.
Lighter than Sun is the throne hall,
Over the graceful boy - a crown..
At once - a beggar! God! He said:
"Forgive, I'm heir to the throne."
To darkness comes, who comes from her.
Sad is the destiny of Britain..
O, wherefore not amid red books
Not to go back to sleep again
Before a lamp? O golden times
Where sight is braver, heart is purer:
O golden times, I say again:
Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Prince and Pauper!
New Moon
Over meadow stands new moon,
Over boundary of dew.
Come, we'll make a friend of you,
Dear, distant, alien.
In the day I hide, am quiet.
Moon above - I have no might!
I rush on this lunar night
To the shoulder of beloved.
I'll never ask me, "Who's he?"
All to know, your lips will say!
Hugs are rude but in the day,
In the day the fit is funny.
In the day, torn by a demon proud,
With a smile on lips I lie.
Night, though.. Darling, far away..
Crescent stands above the wood!
On Parting
Mein Herz tragt schwere Ketten.
Die Du mir angelegt.
Ich mocht mein Leben wetten
Dass Keine schwerer tragt Frankfurt song
Teasing and tempting and playing
We loved like children, us both
But somebody, hiding a smile,
Set up the ungentle nets -
And here we are at the harbor,
Not seeing the wished-for abodes,
But knowing that I will be yours
In the heart, without words, until death.
You told me of all things - so early!
I guessed them so late! In our hearts
A wound is eternal, a silent
Question exists in our eyes,
The desert on earth is so endless,
The heaven, so high, has no stars,
Revealed is the tender secret,
And frost rules for centuries.
I will talk to shades! O my dear,
To forget you I do not have might,
Your visage can't move under shadow
Of eyelids gone over my eyes...
It's darkening... Shutters have closed,
On all things descending is night...
I love you, one ghostly-eternal,
And only you - and always!
To the Next One
Tender caresses of kind little sisters
Are ready for you.
With the birds' songs, O the charmed prince,
We're waiting for you.
Branch drunk with sun, you grew, visage of heaven
Before my eyes.
Like a girl tender, like a child quiet,
All - surprise.
They'll often say: "These sisters are treacherous
In each reply!"
Cocky with daring ones, kids with a boy, timid
With someone shy.
We love, like you, melting clouds and birches
And melted snow.
We love the tales about grandmother's daughters,
Little and slow!
Pitiful is the wind, spring remembering,
Gems in the skies..
We wait for you, one that knows nothing of life,
Meeting
Evening dimmed, like ourselves charmed
With this first warmth of the spring.
Stirring alive, Arbat was alarmed;
With sympathetic tenderness, the kind
Gale touched us with a tired wing.
In our souls, raised on a fairy tale,
Sorrow quietly cried for past things.
He came - so unexpected! So hurriedly -
He who helped in all things before.
And far off in a line unconsolably
The streetlamps' radiant dots
Burned though light darkness some more...
All around flowers we bought;
We bought a bouquet.. What for?
Quietly withered away unseen garden
In the sky violet-red.
How to be saved from late trouble?
All returned. For a moment? For long?
We speechlessly looked at sun going to bed,
And Gogol nodded, thoughtful, from
The pedestal like a brother, sad.
Angelique
Near is the meek image of the dark chapel
Where the organ does weep!
Alien to me is earthly joy.
I'm Angelique.
Quiet singing in unison sounds,
Unclear are the windows, it seems,
Elegant vaults have taken control
Of my life like dreams.
My sight in childhood slipped away there,
It's tormented by the towns.
Talk and the shining hall bore me indeed
And the world wears me down.
Someone lit candles before the Virgin.
(Does the sick healing await?)
This is the reason I'm silent midst you:
I'm different all the way.
Sweet is the weakness of arms relaxed,
Light to me here is all woe.
Dark-leafed ivy, as if they were friends
Embraced the stones;
Grass has blossomed here all the way
Like almond, white and pink...
I need no joy. I don't pity the world:
From Four till Seven
Like in a mirror, there's shade in the heart
I'm bored alone - and with men...
Slowly drags the light of the day
From four till seven!
Everybody is cruel in the dusk,
Don't go to people - they'll lie.
Fingers have wound into a knot
The kerchief. I want to cry.
Only don't torture me so,
If you hurt me I'll forgive!
From four till seven o'clock
Easter in April
Eggs on a plate warmed the soul with delight
And ringing of bells.
What is more radiant than Easter in April,
People, pray tell?
Rays are caressing the grass, from the street
Phrases and words...
Quietly I wander from porch to the barn,
Measuring boards.
Waves of Easter ringing, external dawn,
Like glow in the sky,
Sound of a gramophone of our neighbors
Bitterly cries,
From kitchen follows it endlessly woeful
Harmonica's sound,
Much has gone on, oh yes much has gone on..
The past, fall down!
No, I don't get help from eggs on the dish!
It's late... Gone are the rays..
What is more hopeless than Easter in April,
Contact through Dreams
All's for a moment, that people create,
Glimmer of new things dims,
But yet unaltered, like sorrow, remains
Contact through dreams.
Calming.. If but to forget.. but to sleep..
Sweetness of eyelids over eyes..
Dreams open fates of the future, and bind
For centuries.
All that I stealthily thought, is to me
Clear like a crystal clean.
Us, with a timeless and endless riddle,
United the dream.
I do not pray, "O God, make to vanish
Torment of coming day!"
Oh no, "Oh God, send to him about me
A dream," I pray.
May I get pale at the meeting with you -
Sorrowful is it to meet!
Secret is one: The contact through dreams.
x x x
Azure are the fields, where our dreaming had met.
Don't rush my memory!
Be truthful: Anew you'll touch the silver cup
Not soon with a one such as me.
All's destroyed, not by our volition. And sweet
Is the sigh over lost heaven! May be! -
You're all - May's! For you is my sorrow of May.
All that's dreamed of in May is for thee.
Here we don't need to rendezvous. Truly, we'll meet
Where the truth with the truth I shall meet;
Every evening on bridges shaky and light
We come out one another to greet.
A familiar figure I'll see from afar -
Heart beats rarely, then frequently, though...
Like before you're not wrathful, not vengeful, oh no!
And your eyes are the same, full of woe.
These are dreams. To us both the night is still dear,
Bravely breaking all barriers so.
But the image of her that could not lie, my friend,
Once awakened, don't chase like a foe.
And when he will appear in the evening shade
Under call of a previous song,
Nod to happiness that has elapsed with a smile
And recall without rage the one gone.
Hello from a Train
Louder is noise, as if taller than buildings,
Train is shivering for the final time,
Final time... we're riding... now my winter
Dream, say goodbye!
My winter dream, good to the point of tears,
From you fortune is bearing me away.
It is thus judged! I need no dream nor burden
Along the way.
Under train's noise to swim to the still foggy
And far-off days, trust marvels, is so sweet.
World is so wide! Maybe I will forget
You within it?
The train's darkness presses on the shoulders,
Into the window pours a torrent of fog...
My distant friend, please fathom - self-deception
Is all this talk!
Why the new land?
The glimmer of same stars,
Same laughter, war with boredom, everywhere,
And your gesture will be as a sweet torment
x x x
It is true, is it not, that our souls are not used yet to parting?
With a shimmer of glimmering wings they each other call!
Someone higher parted the arms, tenderly interwoven,
But forgot the remembering souls.
Every evening, lit up by the will of a sorceress gentle.
Every evening, when over the hills, in the heart, stands the fog,
To the soul not forgetting the former deception comes near
With a meek and not confident walk.
Like the wind, that with sharp gusts awakens the things of times prior,
From the glimmering lines your are smiling at me once again.
All is permitted, all! You from dream, I in dream. Will not judge us
The angst of the day.
Someone higher betrayed us to nameless delicious torment,
(Many wanderings blunderings through dark and snow there will be!)
Someone higher parted the arms, tenderly interwoven...
Not responsible for this are we!
Except for Love
Did not love, did not weep. Oh no, did not love, but regardless
I have showed in the shadows the beloved likeness to you.
In our sleep all things did not appear like love:
No cause, no clues.
From the evening hall only to us nodded this image,
Only we - you and me - to it pitiful verses bore.
What has bound us stronger than love has bound others
Is that we adore.
But the gust was escaped, and tenderly somebody approached,
He who could not have prayed, but did love. To judge do not hurry!
Like the most tender note in awakening of the soul
You're memorable to me.
In this sorrowful soul you had wandered, like in open house..
(In our house, in the spring)... Forgotten don't call me!
All my minutes are filled with you, except for love -
In the Winter
Behind the walls once again
Bells' whining is heard.
Several streets between us,
And several words!
The city in darkness sleeps,
Silver sickle appears,
The falling snow scatters
Your collar with stars.
Do your wounds ail for a long time?
Do the calls wound of the past?
Teases the new, seductive,
And shining glance.
(Blue or brown?) It matters more than
Wise pages to the heart!
Rime turns to white the
Eyelashes' darts...
Behind the walls, bell's whining
Lacks strength, is barely heard.
Several streets between us,
And several words!
Clear crescent is leaning into
Books' and poets' souls,
Into your downy collar
Truth
The exhausted world sighs of confusion,
The pink even streams oblivion...
We were parted by shadows, not people,
Oh my dearest boy, heart of mine!
--------------------
Walls are towering, in a fog dressing,
Spear was dropped without strength by the sun..
In the evening world I'm cold. Where are you,
Oh my dearest boy, heart of mine?
--------------------
You will not hear. The walls are encroaching,
All things blend into one, all dies down...
Nothing did, does, will substitute for you,
Oh my dearest boy, heart of mine!
Another Prayer
Once again I am bending my knees before you,
Having noticed your garland of stars far apace.
Let me know, dear Christ, that not all things are ghosts,
Allow me, at last, not a ghost to embrace!
I am tormented by these long days. With no worry,
With no aim, in half-darkness, I am so lost..
I can love ghosts, but can one survive on this planet
For eighteen years solely on ghosts?
And they sing, and they write, joy is in the beginning!
Blossom with your full jubilant soul!
Isn't it true, there's no happiness without sorrow?
I don't have any friends save the dead, none at all.
Those enflamed with another belief for all time, is it so,
From the world in empty desert had hid?
No, I don't need the smiles gained at the cost
Of profaning the highest shrines of my creed.
I don't need bliss that comes at the price of debasement.
I don't need love! I'm sorrowful - not for her.
In the quiet kingdom of beloved ghosts, only ghosts -
Give me my soul to give back, Savior!
To a Growing-Up One
Outside the window once again
A fir is lit by snow..
This cradle of yours, my dear friend,
Why did you outgrow?
The snowflakes fly, to all adhere,
And melt too fast to know..
What therefore for, you stupid one,
Did you it outgrow?
Days' weight upon it didn't press
T'was easy sleeping there,
And now your eyes have darker grown
And gold of your hair..
It burned your sight, but will it give
Happiness, this wide world?
Why, why did you outgrow
Girl Death
With a milky and even wave
The moon washed the cold parquet.
I sweetly was sleeping under the moon,
To a hot cheek pressing a bouquet.
With light and with sleep doubly disturbed,
I opened the eyes sleepy,
And like a pink angel without wings
The Girl Death leaned to me.
Medallion trembles around the thin neck,
A blush on her cheeks pours,
It's visible, that she ran: dusted
A bit are her bluish shoes.
There's fanciful pattern of golden edge,
A turquoise thread in the curls.
"We'll play on the road, together us two:
You - little boy, me - a girl
Put on (you're the knight) my scarf of lace!"
I silently gave the bouquet...
And with a milky and even cold wave
Boy-Madness
I have brought you a bouquet,
Scarlet-red roses, poppies.
I'm not same in anything,
I'm the happy boy-madness.
I'll blow out a yellow candle -
It will be a flashlight pink.
And a golden diadem
I will wear like a king.
I'm a conqueror of sleepy
Kingdoms, a mage. Is't full, King?
I'm a doctor that is healing
Without pills or medicines.
Why the medicines? Why pills too?
We will dance together, kid!
Now flies mounted on a chair
A completely empty bed.
Where he's from - it is my secret:
Serpent, red, will weave and hiss.
I am laughing, all are laughing.
I'm the happy boy-madness.
On a New Year
Let's meet the stranger with a lamp,
With a quiet, loyal flame.
Only no hidden whisper,
No whisper about him!
We do not need the bright light now,
Dim the lamp till it's barely lit.
Only no sight of the better,
No sight of it!
May in a careless worry
Year like a day only seem!
Only no thought of eternal,
No thought about him!
We will again become "sisters",
Nearer to each other sit.
Only no words of the past,
No words about it!
Schoolgirl
I today all night long could not sleep
From the magickal month-of-May noise!
Quietly pulled on the pantyhose
And to the window slipped.
I'm a rebel with whirlwind in the blood,
Only passion and cold matter to me.
I have read Bourge too:
One can't be Happy when one is unloved.
"He"'s rejected since he was twelve,
Plays but Greeg and but Liszt - and come look:
He is smart and well-read, like a book,
And a poet as well!
For but one of his looks of fire
I am ready to fall on my knees!
But my parents our happiness
Tverskaya
Here's the world, where glass-cases are shining,
Here's Tverskaya - we miss it eternally.
Whom does Asya need more than Marina?
Whom does dear Asya need more than me?
In a lively row walking, drinking
Sunset, voices, lights, - all that's there,
And at times lowering our eyelids
Under someone's assiduous stare.
Moscow April night is only ours,
Only ours, the flames shining like darts -
Street to grown ups, to us - Tverskaya
Is a cradle of semi-grown hearts.
This, a cradle of golden sunrise,
The world marvels at what's in morn given..
Here's a window with Tate's diamonds,
With lights here's a window again..
We will know all by faith or by sense,
Starry distance and width of the sky!
Pink stands Strastnoi monastery
Over grey plaza towering high.
Without moment of silence we're walking.
All dear words, all dear traits - in all truth!
Unforgettable April - Tverskaya
You're the cradle of our youth!
At Age Fifteen
Ring, sing, oblivion preventing,
The words "fifteen years old" in my soul.
Why, did I grow up and become big?
Nothing consoles.
Just yesterday, into green grove of birches
Free, in the morning I ran away.
Just yesterday I frolicked without hairdo,
Just yesterday!
Spring ringing of the far-away belltowers
Told me: "Run and sit and lie!"
And every step frolicking was allowed,
And every cry!
What is ahead? What failure lies before me?
In all deceit, all is forbidden.
Thus, crying, with dear childhood
I parted At age fifteen.
Drum
To rock a cradle this morning in May?
Proud neck in lasso, like some?
Distaff to jailbird, to herder - a shawn,
To me - a drum.
Role of a woman's not dear to me:
I fear not wounds, but boredom.
Gives to me everything - honor and might -
This my drum.
So many countries I have not seen!
Trees are in bloom, stands the sun..
Kill all the sorrow around you in flight,
Beat, my drum!
Beat, now you drummer! Ahead of all!
All else - deceit for the dumb!
Why does it conquer the heart on the way.
Autumn in Tarusa
Clear morning is not hot, lightly
You run through the meadow.
Down the Oka pulls a barge,
Very slow.
Several words without willing
You are repeating still.
Somewhere in the field is ringing
Weakly the bell.
Ring in the field? On the meadow?
Are they going to the prayer?
Eyes into somebody's fortune
For a moment stare.
Distance is blue between pine trees,
On threshing-floor voices ring..
And smiles the autumn
To our spring.
Life has flung open, but still..
Ah, days of gold!
Lord, how are they distant!
To Literary Prosecutors
To melt all, that the people forget all,
Like a candle or molten snow?
Be a handful of dust in the future Under cross of a grave?
I say no!
Every moment, from anguish concussing,
I return to the same once again:
Die forever! Did for this the fortune
Give me all things to understand?
Night in child's room, cobweb in the meadow,
In room I am sitting with dolls,
The accursed soul by the vision..
To know and feel it for all!
For this (strength is in the things clear)
I surrender to court what is dear,
That the youth would retain, and forever,
All of my restless young years.
x x x
You walk, looking just like me,
Lowering your eyes.
I lowered them also!
Stop, passerby!
Read - having gathered a bouquet
Of many flowers -
That my name was Marina
And how old I was.
Don't think I'll appear with menace,
That a grave here is hidden..
I loved to laugh too much
When it was forbidden.
And blood to the skin was rushing,
And twisted, the curls of my hair..
I once was too, passerby!
Passerby, stop and stare!
Tear off for yourself a wild stem
And thereafter a berry:
There are no strawberries sweeter
Or bigger than at cemetery.
But only don't grimly stand there,
On the chest lowering your head.
Lightly about me remember,
Lightly about me forget.
How the ray alights you!
You're in golden dust dressed..
And at my voice from below
x x x
These my poems, written so early
That I did not know then I was a poet,
Which having tore, like droplets from a fountain,
Like sparks from a rocket,
Into a sanctuary, where there is sleep and incense
Like little devils having burst,
These my poems about youth and about death,
This unread verse!
Scattered through shops in piles of dust
here nobody picked them up or does,
These my poems, like precious wine,
Will have their time.
x x x
Passing me by, as you walk
To charms doubtful and not mine -
If you but knew how much fire,
How much life is wasted in vain,
On the rustling, occasional shade
What a heroic flame -
And how enflamed my heart
This gunpowder wasted in vain!
O the trains flying into the night,
Carrying sleep on the station away..
If you recognized - if you but knew -
Then and there, I know, anyway.
Why are my words so sharp
In eternal smoke of my cigarette -
How much dark and menacing angst
Is there in my light-haired head.
x x x
My voice is dumb and all the words,
In vain. So now, go!
I won't be in the right before
Anyone, I know.
Beautiful coward, in this battle
It's not for me to fall!
But, dear youth, I do not fight
For power in this world.
And this the noble-minded verse
Never yourself denies.
You can - because of someone else -
Not see my very eyes,
Not to grow blind upon my flame,
Nor feel the strength in me..
What demon in me you let loose
Into eternity!
But know that there will be a court,
Like arrow taking aim,
When two angelic fiery wings
To Asya
1
We're sharp and we are ready,
All the faster.
In each word, in each glance, in each gesture -
Two sisters.
Unique and refined our taste is
And our words,
We from the old Damascus
Are two swords.
Out, threshing-floor and bread's burden
And the ox!
We - are stretched out in heaven
Two arrows!
On the world's market without sin
We're alone.
We - from William Shakespeare
Are two poems.
2
We - are the dressing of poplars
In the spring,
We - are the last hope
Of the kings.
We're on the bottom of ancient cup.
Come see now:
In it is your dawn, and our
Two dawns too.
And touching lips to the cup
Drink all the way.
You will see on the bottom
Our names.
Light glance is brave and shining
Evil too.
Who on earth ever met it
Among you?
Guarding the cradle, the mausoleum
And other things,
We are the final visage
To Sergei Efron-Durnovo
1
Such voices can be,
That you're silent, don't repeat them,
So that wonders you foresee.
There are also giant eyes
The color of the sea
Now he stands in front of you:
Look at forehead and at blood
And compare him with you!
The decrepit blood,
Tiredness turned blue.
Of each noble vein
Blueness triumphs.
Gesture of the prince and lion
With a white foam lace
Repeats again.
Your regiment's - dragoon,
Decembrists and Versaillians!
You don't know - he's so young -
Fingers ask for brushes,
Spars and strings.
2
Like seaweed, like branches of willows
Of Malmazonia are your limbs,
Thus you did lie in sprays of sea foam
And absent-mindedly transfixed
Upon the sweet light-golden melons
Of diamond and aquamarine
The eyes forever semi-open
So blue-and-grayish, bluish-green.
The waves are just like rabid lions,
The arrows of the sun did fly.
And from intolerable blueness
Too whitish, you did there lie.
Behind the back, the desert, somewhere
The station Djankoi had to be,
And underneath your arm stretched out
Melon grew golden quietly.
Thus, calm and precious, you lie there,
Don't give a glance and do not see,
But look - and waves will heave with power,
And mountains will be moved to sea.
And new moons will in sky be burning,
And joyful lions will lie down
Under the single downward leaning
Of your head beautiful and young.
To Byron
I think about the morning of your glory,
About the morning of your days too, when
You stirred just like a demon from your slumber
And were a god to men.
I think of when your eyebrows came together
Over the burning torches of your eyes,
Of how the ancient blood's eternal lava
Rushed through your arteries.
I think of fingers - very long - inside
The wavy hair, about all
Eyes that did thirst for you in alleys
And in the dining-halls.
About the hearts too, which - you were too young then -
You did not have the time to read,
About the times, when solely in your honor
The moon had shined and dimmed.
I think about a hall in semi-darkness,
About the velvet, into lace inclined,
About the poems we would have told each other,
You - yours, I - mine.
I also think about the remaining
From your lips and your eyes handful of dust.
About all eyes, that are now in the graveyard
About them and us.
x x x
How many people fell in this abyss,
I fathom from afar!
There will be time, and I will vanish too
From earth's exterior.
All will be still, that sang and that did struggle,
That glistened and rejoiced:
The greenness of my eyes, the gold of my hair,
And this my tender voice.
Life will continue with its soft hot bread,
With day's oblivion.
All will continue - under outstretched heavens
As if I'd never been!
Like children changeable in every mien
And angry not for long,
Who loved the times when in the fireplace
Into ash turned the log,
Violin and cavalcade within the forest
And in the village, bell...
Upon this dear earth - I will be no longer
That was alive and real!
To all — who are the friends and strangers
To me that never knew what is enough -
I turn to you with this my faith's demand
And a request for love.
Both day and night, in word and letter both:
For truth of yes and no,
For that though I am but twenty I am
So often in such sorrow,
For unavoidably my slights and trespasses
Will be forgiven me -
For all of my impetuous tenderness
And look too proud and free -
For quickness of events as they come rushing,
For truth, for play, say I -
Please hear me! But do also please love me
x x x
Thus to thirst life: And to be tender
And rabid and noisy,
To be intelligent and charming -
Gorgeous to be!
More tender than what are or have been,
Guilt not to know...
This, that in graveyard all are equal,
Angers me so.
To be what nobody holds dear -
Like ice become!
Not knowing what has come before now
Nor what will come,
To forget how the heart broke and
Grew back together,
To forget both the words and voice
And shine of hair.
Bracelet of ancient turquoise
On the stem, on
This my white arm
Narrow and long...
Like painting over a cloud
From afar,
One took the mother-of-pearl pen
In one's arm,
Just like the legs jumped
Over the fence,
To forget, how along the road
Shade advanced.
To forget, like flame of azure, how
Days are subdued...
All my mischief, all my tempest,
And poems too!
Laughter will be chased away by
My miracle.
I, always-pink, will be
The most pale.
And they won't open - thus is needed -
Pity this one!
Not for the sight, not for the fields,
Not for the sun -
These my lowered eyelids. -
Flower not for! -
My earth, forgive for centuries
Forevermore.
Thus both the moon and the snow
Will melt away,
When this young, beautiful century
Will rush on by.
x x x
You, whose sleep is without awakening,
Who does still quietly move,
Go to the Three-Pond alley
If you my poems love.
O, how sunny and how starry
It's to start the life's first tome I pray -
while it is not too late yet -
Come and take a look at our home!
Soon that world will be snuffed out,
In a secret of the night look at it,
While the poplar is not cut down
And our home is not sold yet.
This our poplar! Our childhood's evenings
Underneath it nestle and thrash.
This our poplar among acacias
Is the color of silver and ash.
Hurry on, you will find this world
Unforgettably wonderful!
Go to the Three-Pond Alley
To Alla
1
You will be innocent, gorgeous,
Refined - and to all alien.
A striving, aspiring mistress,
An enticing Amazon.
Your braids of hair, most likely,
To wear like a helmet you'll choose,
You will be the queen of the ballroom -
Of all the poems of our youth.
And your vicious blade of humor
Will pierce through many, queen,
And you will have at your feet
All of which I can but dream.
All will be obedient to you,
And all before you will be quiet.
Like me, you will indisputably
And better poems write.
But will you press tight and deadly
Those temples of yours - who knows -
Just like your young mother
Is pressing her temples now.
2
Yes, I am jealous of you
With such a jealousy!
Yes, I also disturb you
With my angst already.
And this my miserable nature
In you is most awfully clear:
In your without two months two years -
You're in despair.
All dolls in whole wide world, all horses
You'll give without a second thought
For one page from my notebook
And pencil I brought.
You're in a fight with maids - you want
To do all things alone.
Then suddenly you're in despair:
"The sea's gone home."
However proudly I speak of you,
I can't transmit you all about
When you are asking me,
"Mother, Please kiss my snout."
You know, all in me is laughing
When somebody once again
Attempts to kiss you
In vain.
I am the snake that took the princess,
A dragon! Groom of grooms! O light
Of my eyes - O the jealousy
From Cycle "P.E."
1
Clad in the golden dust of evening
An August day did quietly melt.
The ringing streetcars rushed onwards
And people went.
I went along a quiet side street
Without aim, absent-mindedly.
And I remember how the church bells
Sang quietly.
I decided all things on the way
Imagining your pose:
Am I, or am I not, to bring
To you a rose?
And I was readying a phrase,
Forgotten afterward,
Alas - And suddenly - no wait! - at once!
That self-same house.
With many stories, looking bored...
I count the windows, here's the porch.
Unwittingly, cross on the neck
The hands do search.
I count the gray steps, that are leading
Me to the flame.
I ring the bell. Here for thinking
There is no time.
I but remember roar of thunder
And my two hands, as cold as ice.
I call for you. - He is at home, He'll come at once.
--------------------
May with my youth the years bear out
What's unforgotten, one and all.
The paint upon the colored wallpaper
I will recall.
And glass-beads of the lampshade, and
The sound of some strange voices and
Port Arthur and the dull clock beating
Overhead.
The moment, long, in the least measure -
Like hour. But steps from afar.
And you have entered. Here's the squeaking
Of open door.
--------------------
And there at once was fascination.
He leaned down, simple like a king.
And two stars in awe and terror
Were glimmering.
And squinting them, so huge, you did not
Know of the tender face so dear,
Still one more moment - what a tempest
Played here.
I struggled like a hero. Even
You and I once together dined!
A muted voice I do remember
And lips' outline.
And hair, fluffier than down,
And - the most dear! -
The gorgeous wrinkles of laughter
Your long eyes near.
And I recall - you sat right there,
I, here - but you do forget.
What effort all this cost to me,
What minutes yet -
To sit, giving off reams of smoke,
And to observe silence complete ...
It was intolerable to me
Like this to sit.
You do recall this conversation
Of weather and of letter "e."
Behold, you know, for such a strange dinner
There cannot be.
In a half-turn, in a half-darkness
I laugh, not waiting for myself:
"Eyes of a thoroughbred dog,
Count, Farewell."
--------------------
Lost and without aim completely
I walked an alley dark as hell
And, seemingly, there was no singing
Of the bell.
2
When he did live everyone loved him
Eternal loyalty did vow,
Carry the wreaths out of the lilies
Onto fresh snow.
Over his miserable lodgings
For a brief minute go slow
That he would not for too long shiver
On this first snow.
Warm, melt the icy blood inside him
With breath of body and of soul!
But if at once the love inside is
Already cold -
To lover - love the brother even,
The child on forehead wears a wreath -
He can hug no one in the coffin
After his death.
Ah, he, whom you so loved, for whose sake
You would have gone into hell's vault -
That he is now in a coffin
Is not his fault!
From rustling of steps and of dress
Trembling from head down to your feet -
How he'd discover your embraces,
Whene'er could he!
O women! For each one among you
He became ash and madness all!
With what thirst, fully, did he love you,
You must recall!
Recall, how you caught
From his eyes each look,
Recall the former vows you've spoken
In the night's dark.
Thus you will not become disloyal
Before his cross so nondescript,
And each should quietly remember
His lip.
And before rushing onwards
In sled with gypsy bell, go slow,
And with your faces fall down
Into night snow.
Let it your cheeks tenderly sprinkle,
And melt in droplets near your eyes..
I am among you one as I am
Writing these lines -
I won't break vows I have not taken -
Life - your brown eyes - A
nd for the soul of Love herself,
O women, pray!
3
The leaves are scattered above your tombstone
And winter's smell.
Listen, the dead one, listen, O dear one:
You're my own still.
You laugh! - Moon is high - in the roadside cabin
Full of charm.
My - so undoubted and unchanging -
Like this arm.
To hospital doors with a knot in the morning
I'll come again.
You simply have gone to the great wide seas,
To sunny land.
I kissed you! I charmed you! I laugh at this darkness
Beyond the tomb!
I disbelieve death! I wait at the terminal -
Come home.
May leaves all be scattered, erased and washed out
On mourning ribbon the words.
And, I am also dead, if you're dead
For the whole world.
I see and I feel - I sense you everywhere -
What's ribbon from wreaths of yours -
I did not forget you and will not forget you
Forevermore.
I know the aimlessness of such a promise
Its pointlessness too.
Letter to endlessness - letter to limitlessness -
Letter into the blue.
4
Here's your roses - pull your hands toward them -
Having gone farther than the sea, dear friend!
My dear friend, having with you born out
The most precious treasures of the land.
I am robbed and deceived - There's no letter,
No ring in my memory!
How the features are memorable to me
Of your face, wondering for centuries.
How memorable is the asking, attentive
Stare - inviting to sit near -
And the worldy flattery of the dying
And the smile from the great Afar -
My dear friend, gone to sailing eternally -
A fresh hillock among other mounds!
Pray that there will not be other sailors
Ensconced in your heavenly sound.
From Cycle "Girlfriend"
1
You're happy? You won't say! Barely!
Better let go!
You kissed too many, I do think,
Therefrom, sorrow.
All heroines of Shakespeare's tragedies
In you I see.
Nobody saved you, you the young
Tragic lady.
You are so tired of repeating
Love's charm!
Eloquent, the pig iron bracelet
On bloodless arm.
I love you. - Like a thundercloud
Above you - sin -
Because you're best of all and caustic
And sting,
Because in darkness of the roads differ
Our lives and we,
For your inspired enticement and
Dark destiny,
Because to you, my round-headed demon,
"Forgive" I'll say,
Because you - tear apart above the coffin! -
Cannot be saved!
For this trembling, because - is it not so -
I have a dream? -
For the ironic beauty of this,
That you - aren't he.
2
Under caresses of an ivy
Plaid I recalled yesterday's dream.
Whose victory? Who's been defeated?
What has it been?
Rethinking everything once more,
Torturing myself once again.
In this, for which no word I know,
Had love ever been?
Who was the hunter? Who - the hunted?
All is reversed as if by Satan!
What did the loudly purring
Siberian Cat, understand?
In this self-willing one another
Who in whose hand was but a ball?
Whose heart flew - yours or mine,
Do you recall?
And still again - what has it been too?
What do I want, what do I pity?
And I don't know: Did I win?
Did somebody Conquer me?
3
Today was melting, and today
Before the window I did stand.
A sober look, a freer chest,
I'm satisfied just once again.
I don't know why. Perhaps the soul
Has simply grown tired of it all,
And somehow the rebellious pencil
I do not wish to touch at all.
Distant to good and evil both,
Inside the fog I stood, and thus,
Was lightly drumming with my finger
Upon the barely sounding glass.
It is indifferent to the soul
Than this one you first met - say I -
Than mother-of-the-pearl mud puddles
Where in full pleasure splashed the sky,
Than bird that overhead is flying
And dog that's simply running by
And even the impoverished singer
Did not begin to make me cry.
The dear art of oblivion
The soul has mastered all the way.
Some overwhelmingly big feeling
Melted within my soul today.
4
You were too lazy to get dressed,
Too lazy to get up for me.
And every following day for you
Would have been happy with my glee.
To come so late on a cold night
Embarrassed you especially.
And every following hour for you
Would have been young with this my glee.
I was the youth that passed you by -
You did this without ill intent,
Your actions were in every way
Incorrigible, innocent.
5
Today, around eight, dashing through
Big Lubanka straight ahead,
Like bullet, like snowball,
Somewhere rushed the sled.
Already the laughter rang...
I froze as I peered:
Red down of the hair
And somebody tall was near!
We were with another, and opened
Another sled route, I thought,
With things that were dear to me -
More strongly, than I did want.
"O, je n'en puis plus, j'etouffe!" -
You screamed in full voice of yours,
And boldly went tucking in
The hollow of fur on her.
World is happy, and evening is bold!
From the muff purchases fly...
Thus you rushed in a snowstorm,
Coat to coat, eye to eye.
And cruelest mutiny happened,
And white snow did pour.
I followed you with my eyes
For two seconds - and no more.
And caressed the longish nap
Upon his coat - without wrath.
O Snow Queen! Your little Kai
Is frozen to death.
6
Just like a young plant sprout
The neck is high and free.
Who'll tell the name, who - years,
Who - place, who - century?
The curve of not bright lips
Is capricious and wan,
But blinding is the terraced
Forehead of Beethoven.
Clean to endearment
Is the molten oval.
A hand, in which a whip would do,
And - in the silver - opal.
Hand, meriting a fiddlestick,
Gone into precious silk,
A beautiful hand also,
A hand that is unique.
7
You pass me by as you stroll,
I don't touch your hand at all.
But my angst is eternal yet,
That you be the first I met.
Heart said "Darling!" out of control,
I forgave you it all,
Knowing nothing - not even the name!
Love me, love me, I exclaim.
From the curve of your lips with one glance
I see their forced arrogance,
By above brows jutting out:
This heart storms, no doubt.
With a black silk armor - dress,
Voice with gypsy hoarseness,
Until pain I love all things in thee,
Even that you are not a beauty.
Beauty, in summer won't wilt!
Not a flower - you're a stalk made of steel,
Meaner than mean, sharper than sharp, I say,
From what island were you born away?
With a rod you do wonders, with a fan -
In each bone and in each vein,
In the form of each finger full of rage -
Woman's tenderness, boy's courage.
Parrying all ridicules with verse
I open for you and the Universe
All that's ready in you, fine one,
Stranger with forehead of Beethoven!
8
Under sun the eyes are burning,
Day's not equal day.
I tell you for that occasion
If I would betray:
Whose lips I had not been kissing
In the hour of love,
To whom I upon black midnight
Did not dreadfully vow -
To live, like a flower blooms, like
Mother tells a child,
Never with an eye to go
To any side..
See that cross made of cypress?
It's familiar to you.
All will wake - you only whistle
Underneath my window.
9
I'll repeat in hour of parting
When love comes to end
That I loved, yes that I loved truly
Your masterful hands
And the eyes - somebody isn't
Gifted with a glance! -
Those that answer are demanding
For a look every chance.
You with your thrice-cursed passion -
God sees all, say I!
And demanding a payment for
An accidental sigh.
And I tiredly say, to listen
Hurry not at all!
Why is it that your own soul
Stands across my soul.
And again I'll also tell you:
All the same - hear this! -
Far too young was this my mouth
For your gentle kiss.
Glance is luminous and daring,
Heart - like five year old...
Happy's he who did not meet you
On your road.
10
Before a mirror, where there's fog
And turbid sleep, your way
I want to try - where it will lead
And where there is the quay.
I see: the mast upon a ship,
And you - on deck, standing...
You - in the smoke of train... the fields
In lament of evening
The ravens flying overhead,
The evening fields in dew...
In all the four directions
I Am truly blessing you.
11
The clock - what time it is?
Rang out.
Hollows of giant eyes,
Watered satin of the dress..
I just about see you, I guess,
Just about.
The neighboring porch
Has turned off the light.
Somewhere they love too much..
Your face's sketch
Is a scary sight.
It's semi-dark in the room,
Night is one under skies.
Pierced by the light of the moon
Window deepened - Like sheet of ice.
"You give up" - the voice burst.
"I didn't fight, it was my choice."
Voice from the moon catches frost.
Voice - like from hundred verst
This same voice!
Between us stood ray of moon,
Moving the world everywhere.
Intolerably shone
Metal red-brown
Of crazy hair.
Run of the moon forgot
History's run.
Mirror breaks moon apart.
Knocking of hooves far apart,
Screeching of a cart.
Light on the street burned down,
Running fades.
A cock will crow soon
Parting for two young
Ladies.
* Verst: a Russian unit of measuring distance, equal to about a kilometer. Top
x x x
Insanity - and good reason,
Disgrace - and honor,
All, that brings on thoughtfulness,
Is spilling over -
In me. - All the penal passions
Become as one! -
All images wage war inside
This hair of mine!
The lover's whisper, all around
By rote I know,
Experience of twenty two years
Nothing but sorrow!
But - won't you say - innocently pink
Look I,
I'm virtuoso's virtuoso
In art of lies.
In her let out like a ball,
Caught once again,
The blood of Polish great-grandmoms
Is evident.
I lie because in cemeteries
The grass does grow,
I lie because in cemeteries
Snowstorm does blow...
From violin - from automobile -
From silk, from fire...
From torment that not only me
They all desired!
From pain, that I am not the bride
Of the groom...
From poem and gesture - for the gesture
And for the poem!
From tender boa on the neck...
And how can I
Not lie - when my voice sounds more tender
x x x
I like it that you're burning not for me,
I like it that it's not for you I'm burning
And that the heavy sphere of Planet Earth
Will underneath our feet no more be turning
I like it that I can be unabashed
And humorous and not to play with words
And not to redden with a smothering wave
When with my sleeves I'm lightly touching yours.
I like it, that before my very eyes
You calmly hug another; it is well
That for me also kissing someone else
You will not threaten me with flames of hell.
That this my tender name, not day nor night,
You will recall again, my tender love;
That never in the silence of the church
They will sing "halleluiah" us above.
With this my heart and this my hand I thank
You that - although you don't know it -
You love me thus; and for my peaceful nights
And for rare meetings in the hour of sunset,
That we aren't walking underneath the moon,
That sun is not above our heads this morning,
That you - alas - are burning not for me
And that - alas - it's not for you I'm burning.
x x x
My ancestor was a rider,
A thief, man with violin.
Is this not why my taste wanders
And hair smells of wind?
Does not he steal from a car,
Tan, apricots with my hand,
The author of my passionate fate,
Hook-nosed and curly-haired.
Twirling between teeth a wild rose
He wondered at tiller with plough..
He was a bad comrade - and wild
And tender he was at love!
Moon, beads, pipe and neighboring girls -
All of them - he loved.
I also think that my yellow-eyed
Ancestor was a coward.
That, having sold soul to Devil for a pence
At midnight he did not go
By cemetery; that he carried a knife
Behind a boot-leg, so.
That many a time from a corner he jumped
Like a cat, agile and thin..
And somehow I understood that he did
Not play on a violin.
And somehow all was not fitting to him,
Like in the summer - last year's snow.
Such a violinist my ancestor was.
I became such a poet - so.
x x x
Sleep the rattles and dogs of neighbors -
Not one voice, not one car.
O lover, do not investigate
Why I am parting the bar.
New moon to a midnight is going:
Hour of monks - and of sharp-eyed birds,
Hour of youths and conspirators,
Hour of lovers and murderers.
Here each person's thought is double,
Here, rider, hurry the horse.
We will pass, not jingling with bracelets
And not tinkling with a purse.
Now the houses part with houses,
On the square there is talk and dance..
Here, before a small Mother of God,
Cordoba did its love pronounce.
Here, upon a stone porch,
By the fountain we'll sit silently,
Where you first for my face were aiming
With wolf's eyes.
Rustling of silk around the knees,
Smell of rose and a lock of hair..
O, beloved one - see, she's here -
x x x
There is no day's temptation
In a folio in which people die.
To woman - all of the planet,
To woman - Ars Amandi.
Heart - of a lovers' potion Heart -
is more loyal than all.
Somebody's mortal sin is
Woman from the cradle.
Ah, so far to the heaven!
Lips - in the dark are near..
God, do not judge! On the planet
x x x
The gypsy passion of parting!
You meet it - and you take flight!
I dropped the arms and the forehead
And think staring into the night:
No one, digging in our letters,
Understood in all depth
How we're sacrilegious - that is
How we in each other have faith.
Poems about Moscow
1
Clouds - all around,
Cupolas - around,
Over all Moscow
Many arms are wound!-
I am lifting you, my best burden you
Oh my little tree
Flying weightlessly!
In this wonder-town,
In this peaceful town,
Where if I were dead
I'd be happy one,
To be king for you, and to grieve for you,
A wreath to take on,
Oh my one firstborn!
You to Sacrament bow
Do not blacken brows
And all forty - count -
Forty churches now.
You with steps do walk - with a young one's walk -
All the many thrills
Of the seven hills.
Time will come for you:
And the daughters - too
You will give Moscow
With sweet sorrow.
My sleep by my will, like a ringing bell,
Early dawns above -
On the Vagankov.
2
From my hands - not a hand-created town,
My gorgeous brother, my strange one.
Upon the church - Forty times forty, side by side,
And pigeons that above them glide.
And Spassky - with flowers - gate,
Where Orthodox Believer doffs his hat.
The starry belltower - haven from sin -
Where from the people's kisses floor is clean.
Incomparable five-cathedral round
Accept, my ancient and inspired friend.
To Unexpected Joy in the garden
I'll lead my guest from foreign land.
The sleepless bells will ring, will shine
The cupolas of gold very fine,
And a cloth will be dropped by Mother of God
Upon you from the purple clouds.
And you will get up, full of divine power..
And you won't repent that you were my lover.
3
Past the towers at night
We are rushed by squares.
Oh, how roar of soldiers
In the night instills fear!
Rumble, loud heart!
Kiss with passion, love!
This roar is so bestial!
Daring - oh - is blood!
My mouth is aflame,
Given that sight's divine.
Like a golden chest
Iverskaya does shine.
You stop picking quarrels
And a candle light,
That it won't be now
With you as I'd like.
4
The day will come - a sad day, they say!
They'll finish ruling, finish crying, burn away -
Chilled with the others' nickels all the same -
My eyes, moveable like the flame.
And - like a double as his double he does sense -
The likeness will appear through light face.
O, I at last will merit thee,
A gorgeous belt of beauty!
And from afar - do I envy you? -
Absent-mindedly baptizing, will pull
A pilgrimage along the road black
To my hand, which I surely won't draw back,
To my hand, on which the ban no longer sits,
To my hand, that no more exists.
Your kisses, O the living ones,
I won't oppose at first - not one.
The majesty's shawl beautiful
Has shrouded me from head to heel.
Nothing will make me blush, today
I have a holy Easter day.
Along the streets of left-alone Moscow
I will drive forth, and you will slowly go.
And none will lag behind along the road,
And on coffin's roof will thunder the first stone -
And sleep, self-loving and lonely
Will be resolved finally.
And nothing will be needed to Marina
Our newly-introduced ballerina.
5
Above the city Peter cursed to hell
Rolled the delirious thunder of the bells.
Turned over thundering the high tide of the sea
Above the woman that was rebuked by thee.
To Peter and to you, O Tsar, praise be!
But bells are higher still than both of ye.
While they are ringing still out of the blue -
Indisputable, Moscow's primogeniture.
And sixteen hundred churches, near and far
All laugh at puny hubris of the tsars.
6
The rain of bells drizzles above
The blue of near-Moscow groves.
Blind men wander the Kaluga road -
Beautiful - Kaluga - song, and the same
Washes and washes the names
Of peaceful wanderers, in darkness of ones praising God.
And I think at these times: Someday I
Of you, friends, and you, enemies, having tired,
And of compliance of Russian word -
A silver cross on my chest I will don
Cross myself and quietly go along
The old Kaluga road.
7
Seven hills - just like seven bells!
Belltowers on the seven bells.
Sixteen hundred of them, to count them all.
Full of bells are these
Moscow's seven hills!
In the ringing, fine-gold day of John
The Baptist was born. House like gingerbread,
And around a hedge, and around a hedge,
And the churches there stand with golden heads.
And as nuns were pouring to dining hall,
The first ringing I did love, I did love
And the sorceress from a neighbor's yard
And hot sleep and noise in the stove.
Do conduct me, all you imbecile,
Thieving, flagellant Moscow crowd!
Priest, shut my mouth more tightly still
With the ringing-bell Moscow's ground!
8
Moscow - what a giant
And strangely-mannered home!
In Russia all are homeless.
We all to you will come.
A knife behind a boot-leg,
A shoulder brand in shame.
From far away us all
You will call all the same.
Upon the penal brandings,
On every kind of ill -
A baby Panteleimon
We have, O man who heals,
And there behind that door,
Where all the people pour -
There the fine golden heart
Is burning of Iver.
And "Halleluiah" pours
Upon the fields grown tan.
I kiss you in the bosom,
O the Moscow land!
9
With a red brush
The mountain-ash burned:
The leaves were falling
And I was born.
Hundreds of belltowers
Argued at least.
It was the Saturday:
John the Baptist.
And in my teeth now
I want to crush
The hot ashberry's
Bitter brush.
From Cycle "Insomnia"
1
In a shady ring my eyes
She surrounded - insomnia.
With a shady wreath insomnia
Did my eyes bind.
At night - the same!
To idols don't pray.
Idol-worshipper - I'll give
Your secret away.
To you - day's not enough,
Fire of sun above!
You pale-faced one, wear
My rings' pair!
You screamed - and proclaimed
The wreath of shade.
Enough - did you - call me?
Enough - did you - sleep with me?
People bow to you.
Light in face you'll lie.
I'll be reader to you,
I, insomnia:
Sleep, soothed,
Sleep, rewarded one,
Sleep, wreathed,
Woman.
That - you would sleep - easy,
I will sing - to thee:
"Never-silent one,
Go to sleep, my girl,
You the sleepless one,
Sleep, my little pearl."
And to whom we didn't write letters so,
And to whom we did not vow..
Sleep.
Here now parted are
The inseparable.
Here released from arms
Are your little arms.
Here you're tormented,
My dear tormentess.
Sleep's - holy.
All - sleep.
Wreath's - gone.
2
In my giant city it is night.
From the sleepy home I alight
People think: Daughter and wife
And I recall just this: Night.
On my way blows the wind of July
And somewhere music in a window - barely.
Ah, now the wind will blow until dawn
Into the chest through the chest's thin wall.
There's light on the window, and a black poplar,
A flower in the hand, and ringing in the tower,
And this step nobody behind,
And this my shade, but me you can't find.
Fires - like threads of golden beads,
Taste of night leaf between my teeth.
Free me from shackles of the day,
That I'm your dream, friends, understand.
3
After a sleepless night the body gets weaker,
It becomes dear and not yours - and nobody's.
Just like a seraph you smile to people
And arrows moan in the slow arteries.
After a sleepless night the arms get weaker
And deeply equal to you are the friend and foe.
Smells like Florence in the frost, and in each
Sudden sound is the whole rainbow.
Tenderly light the lips, and the shadow's golden
Near the sunken eyes. Here the night has sparked
This brilliant likeness - and from the dark night
Only just one thing - the eyes - are growing dark.
4
This night today I am alone in the night -
A sleepless and a homeless nun!
This night today I have the keys
Of all the gates of capital, just one!
The sleeplessness has pushed me on the way.
O, dusky Kremlin, how you're beautiful!
I kiss into the chest this night today
The whirling-round ground as it does howl!
The stifling wind blows straight into the soul,
The hair arises - not the hair, but down.
Those who are pitied and those who are kissed -
This night today I pity everyone.
5
A window here again
Where they don't sleep again.
Maybe they thus sit,
Maybe they drink wine.
Or they would not part
Simply the two hands.
There is such a window
In each house, friend.
Window in the night -
Partings', meetings' scream!
Maybe - hundred candles,
Maybe - only three.
And my restless mind
Cannot find its peace.
In my very home
Was begotten this.
Pray, friend, for the sleepless home
From Cycle "Poems to Blok"
1
A bird in the hand is your name,
An icicle on the tongue is your name,
One movement of your lips is your name,
Five letters is your name.
A ball caught in the flight it is,
A silver tambourine between the lips,
A stone, into a quiet pond thrown,
Will sob the name by which you're known.
Your loud name resonates in the light
Crackling of the hooves in the night.
And a trigger with crackling ample
Will call it back into the temple.
Your name - forbid this! -
Your name - the eyes kiss,
In tender chill of motionless eyelids
Your name - to the snow give a kiss.
Key, ice, blue gulp - deep
With your name is the sleep.
2
A knight without reproach,
A ghost, a gentle one,
Who is it that called you
Into my life so young?
In fog greyish-blue
Dressed in a chausible
Of snow, stand you.
Around the city
By the wind I'm chased,
For the third evening
A foe I sensed.
The blue-eyed
Singer made of snow
Stared at me so.
The snow-white swan
Lays his down under my feet. Flow
Feathers
And slowly fall on the snow.
Thus on the feathers
I walk to the door
Behind which is death.
Beyond blue windows
He sings to me,
With far-away tambourines
He sings to me,
With far-off cry
With swan's cry -
He calls.
My dear ghost!
All's my dream, I know.
Do a good thing:
Amen, amen, scatter so!
Amen.
3
You walk out to the Falling Sun,
Evening light in your face,
You walk out to the Falling Sun,
And the snowstorm blots out the trace.
Past the windows - passionless -
You will go in the quiet snow,
My beautiful believer in God,
Quiet to the light of my soul.
I do not lust after your soul!
Your footpath is inviolable.
Into the arm, white from the kisses,
I will not hammer my nail.
And I will not respond to the name,
And I will not pull with my arm,
To the sacred image of wax
I will only bow from afar.
And, standing under the slow snow,
I will fall on my knees in the snow,
And in your holy name
I will kiss the evening snow -
There, where with a majestic foot
In the coffin silence you did go,
Quiet to light - holy glories -
You the all-keeper of my soul.
4
To beast - abode,
To wanderer - road
To dead one - quay
To each - their own way.
To a woman - to fool,
To the king - to rule, To me - to extol
Your name.
5
Cupolas are burning here in Moscow!
Bells are ringing here in Moscow!
And coffins here stand in row -
In them queens do sleep, and the kings.
And you do not know, in Kremlin at dawn
Breathing's lighter - than in all the world!
And you do not know, in Kremlin at dawn
Till the dawn I pray and sing.
And you walk on by over your Nieva
At the time, when on river Moskva
I stand and my head bow
And the lights to each other cling.
I am loving you with insomnia,
I am hearing you with insomnia -
At the time when, on the whole Kremlin yard
Awaken those who ring..
But my river - with your river flows,
And my arm - with your arm goes
They won't come together, Oh my bliss,
Until dawn catches dawn.
6
They thought he was a man!
And they forced him to die.
He died forevermore.
About a dead angel, cry!
He sang the evening beauty
At sundown of the day.
Shimmer hypocritically
Three waxen flames.
Rays went from him -
On the snow, hot strings!
Three candles of wax -
To the sun! Light-bearing!
O look now, how his
Dark eyelids have sunken in!
O look now, how his
Wings are broken!
The black reader reads,
Crosses the arms idle...
The dead singer lies
And celebrates Sunday.
7
Like a weak ray through black gloom of the hells -
Thus is your voice against exploding cannonballs.
And in the thunder, just like some seraph
Announces in a voice tone-deaf -
Somewhere from foggy mornings long ago -
How he did love us blind and nameless so -
For sin - apostasy, for coat of blue..
For how, Russia, he did not stop loving you,
And more tender than all - into the most deep
Night vanished he to do the wicked deeds!
And how with a lost finger near the temple
He draws and draws... and about this simply,
What days await us, how God will tell lies,
How you will call the sun - and it won't rise!
Thus, one on one with the prisoner
(Or child speaks in his slumber?)
Before us came - on the wide square -
The holy heart of Blok, Alexander.
8
Here is he - look - tired of the foreign lands,
A chief without friends.
Here - drinks from mountain rapids with his hand -
A knight with no land.
There's all for him: knighthood, and land,
Mother, and bread.
Great's your inheritance - so rule this land,
Friend without friends!
9
His friends - do not bother him!
His servants - do not bother him!
From his face it was evident deemed:
Not from this world does my kingdom come.
Eternal snowstorms circled the veins
Hunched-over shoulders bent from the wings,
In singing cut, into baked-over flame
He let his soul go like a swan.
Fall then, O fall then, copper heavy!
Wings are ordained correctly: To fly!
Lips, that have shouted the word: Reply! -
They know, that this is not there - to die!
He drinks the dawn, drinks the sea -
Revels in full. - Don't serve the requiem!
Of one who forever ordered: Be! -
There is enough bread left to feed him!
10
Not a broken rib -
A broken wing.
Not to the shooters shot -
Through chest. Not to take out
This bullet. Wing can't be repaired.
He walked impaired.
--------------------
Sticky is crown of thorns on the head!
What is the noise of mob to one dead,
The swan's down of woman's flattery...
He walked, deaf and lonely,
Freezing over the sunsets
With emptiness of eyeless statues.
But one thing still lived in him:
The broken wing.
11
Without word, without call -
Like a thatcher from the roof falls.
And again, possibly,
You come - in the cradle you lie?
You burn and don't dim,
The light of several weeks..
Which of the mortals
Rocks your crib?
The blessed heaviness!
Singing chestnut that prophesies!
Oh, who will tell me
In which cradle you lie?
"So far it's not sold!"
With jealousy in my head
With a great detour
I'll walk the Russian land.
The midnight countries
Will go from end to end.
Where's the mouth, his wound,
His eyes' bluish lead?
Take him! Hold tightly!
To love him and love him only!
Who will whisper to me
In which cradle you lie?
Pearly grains,
Muslin shade full of sleep.
Not laurel but thorn -
Sharp-toothed shade of a cap.
Not angel, but bird
Opened two white wings!
And to be born once again,
That snowstorm again blew in?!
Tear him! Hold tightly!
Just don't give away! Hold high!
Oh, who will breathe to me
In which cradle you lie?
And maybe false is
My feat, and my labor futile.
How you're put in the ground,
Maybe - you'll sleep till trumpet call.
The giant indenture
Of your temples - catches my sight.
Such an exhaustion -
Can't be lifted even with pipes!
The country pasture,
Rusty, quiet reliably.
The janitor will show me
In which cradle you lie.
12
Like drunk, like sleepy
Unawares, without caution,
The dimples of temples:
Sleepless conscience.
Empty eye sockets:
All dead and light.
Empty glass of a dreamer
And man with second sight.
Not you on
Still rustling pile of garbage
Carried out -
Returning by Hades' gorge?
Did not this,
Ringing with a silver bell,
Head flow past
The sleepy Gebr?
13
Thus, O the Lord! And this my prayer
Accept for temple's confirmation.
I sing not pleasures of my love -
I sing the wound of my nation.
Not nasty person's rusty trunk -
Granite, with people's knees rubbed coarse.
Hero and tsar given to all,
To all - a singer - righteous - corpse.
Not bashful at the coffin boards,
Breaking upon Dnieper the ices,
Russia - on Easter it does swim
In pouring streams of thousand-voices.
Thus, heart, there will be cry and praise!
Let your cry - which thousand?
The mortal love is jealous so.
The other's at the chorus glad.
To Akhmatova
1
O muse of weeping, the most beautiful muse!
O you the child of white night, ever mad and fierce!
A black snowstorm over Russia you send
And your cries our hearts like flying arrows pierce.
And we tumble down and a deaf "Oh" -
A hundred thousand people your name are calling:
Anna Akhmatova! The name is a giant sigh,
And she who is nameless into the abyss is falling.
We're blessed that along with you we walk the same
Earth, that the sky is the same overhead;
And he, who is wounded with your mortal fate,
As an immortal goes onto his deathbed.
In my singing city the cupolas are aflame,
And wandering blind man praises the Spassky light..
And I give to you my city that's full of bells,
Akhmatova, and my heart I give to you beside.
2
What are people's wiles to me? Holding
My head I stand,
On late dawn I sing
Holding my head.
Ah, I have been raised on the crest
Of a wave wrathful and mad!
I sing you, that you are alone among us,
Like moon overhead!
That, having flown like a raven on the heart,
Pierced the clouds so.
Hook-nosed one, whose wrath is deadly and
Whose mercy's deadly also.
That over my Kremlin made of fine gold
Has spread out her night,
That tied my neck as if with a belt
With singing delight.
Ah, I am happy! Never the dawn
Had been more clear,
Ah, I am happy, that for your sake
I'm leaving as a beggar -
That you, whose voice, narrowed my breath -
O depth, O haze -
That by the name I called
The Village of the Tsar muse.
3
Just one more gigantic flap -
Eyelids are quiet.
O, dear body! O the ash
Of bird so light!
I sang and waited, what I did
In fog of day.
So little body was in her,
And so much sigh.
Her dreamy sleepiness is not
Humanly dear.
Something of eagle and of angel
There was in her.
She sleeps, and chorus lulls her to
Garden of Eden. As if he's not sated with song,
The sleeping demon!
--------------------
Hours, days, centuries - Not us,
Not our rooms yet.
And monument does not recall
Already, bent.
The broom is doing naught for long,
And sweetly heave
Over the Muse of Village of the Tsar
The nettle's leaves.
4
Mother's name is Anna,
Lev - of the child.
In his name is fury,
In her is quiet.
Red is his hair -
Tulip's head!
So, Hossanah
To the little tsar!
God give him lungs
And the smile of Mom
And a look of
Pearl-seeking one.
God, attentively
Look after him:
Tsar's son's more divine
Than the other sons.
Red lion-cub
With green eyes,
Heavy burden is on your head!
Northern and Southern oceans
And thread of pearl
Black rosary is in your hand.
5
You repeat nobody. How many
Companions and friends! And
Pride and bitterness rule over
This youth so tender.
Remember the crazy day at the port
Threats of the Southern wind,
Roar of the Caspian - and in the mouth
A rose's wing.
Like a gypsy I gave to you
A stone in a cut frame,
Like a gypsy I lied to you
Something about fame..
And - high at the sails -
Teenager in blue blouse.
Thunder of sea and the menacing call
Of the wounded Muse.
6
You won't leave alone! I'm a warden,
You're an escort. The fate is one.
And one in the frigid empty
Order for horses is to us given.
And my temperament is peaceful!
And clear are my eyes!
Let me go, Mr. Escort, now
To take a walk to that pine!
7
That from catafalques and from cribs
You, ripping away the cover,
You that fan the winds
And snowstorms send over,
Sending fevers, poems and wars -
Serf-keeper! Black magician! -
I have heard the menacing roar
Of lions, of the chariot preaching.
I hear voices in passionate tones -
And a steadfastly silent one.
I see the red sails -
And a black one them among.
Either by ocean you lead the way,
With the full breast - or by air
I, like sun, wait, holding out my chest
To the judgment that does death bear.
8
People shouted on the street,
Smoke flew from the bakery place.
I remembered the ruby mouth
Of a street singer with narrow face.
In the dark kerchief with flowers -
Honored by your civility
You were drowned in the crowd
Of praying ones at Sergei-Trinity,
Pray for me, beautiful one,
Sorrowful one and mad,
How the forests will crown you as
The lashing mother of god.
9
To the golden-lipped Anne - to a word
That all of Russia redeems!
Carry away my voice
And my heavy sigh, wind.
About quiet bow of the earth among
Golden fields, O the burning skies,
Tell the story; and also about
From the agony blackened eyes.
You attained once again
In the thundering height!
You - the nameless one!
Carry love of mine
To the gold-lipped Anne -
All of Russia!
10
At the thin wire over oats' wave
Like thousand voices - is the voice today!
And - holy, holy, holy - tabors passing by
Speak with the same voice, O the holy,
I stand and I listen and I rub the corn ear,
And voice locks me up with a dark cupola.
--------------------
Not the swimming willows' branch
But your arm I truly touch.
For all, who in torment your approach glory -
The earthly woman, a cross in the sky to me!
At night curtsies to you alone I bear,
And with your eyes from the walls the icons stare!
11
You'll overtake the Sun in the sky,
In your hand all the stars!
Ah, if - only to enter you
Like a wind - door ajar!
And to tremble, and burst out,
And sharply to dull the sight,
And, like a forgiven child,
To sob and to go quiet.
12
I have been given arms - to each one to stretch both,
Not to hold tight not with one, lips - to give names,
Eyes - not to see, the high eyebrows above them -
To marvel tenderly at love, and more still at not love.
And this bell there, heavier than the Kremlin's,
Ceaselessly walking and walking around in the chest -
This - who knows? - I don't know - maybe - it must be -
On Russian soil will nor be a guest!
x x x
I'll conquer you from all lands, from all the sky,
Because forest is my cradle and in the forest I'll die,
For I stand on the ground with just one of my legs,
For I will sing to you like no one else.
I'll conquer you from all times, I will fight
All golden banners, all swords and all nights,
I will chase away dogs from a porch and I'll throw the key
For in winter night not even dogs are more loyal than me.
I'll conquer you from all others - from that one
I will be no one's wife, you - no one's groom,
And in the last argument I will take you - be quiet! -
From the one with which Jacob stood in the night.
But for now I won't on your chest the fingers cross -
With you, you remain - O the curse! -
Your two wings, that at the ether take aim -
Because the world is your cradle, and world your grave.
x x x
To you, my rival, I will come sometime
At night when moon is standing overhead
When frogs are wailing loudly on the pond
And women are from pity going mad.
And, marveling at beating of the eyelids
And on your jealous eyelashes, it seems,
I'll tell you that I'm not a human being
But just a vision which you only dream.
And I will say: "Console me, console,
Someone is beating nails into my heart!"
And I will say to you that wind is fresh
And that the stars over our heads are hot.
To Jews
Who did not stomp on you - who did not melt you -
O merchant of the non-flammable roses!
One thing unshakable upon this planet
Did leave behind him Savior Jesus:
Israel! Your second kingdom's coming:
For all the money, if they only knew,
You paid with all your blood - you are the heroes,
The traitors, prophets, and the traders too.
In each of you - Even in him that counts
His gold before a candle in the dark -
The voice of Jesus resonates more loudly
Than in John, Matthew, Luke and Mark.
Around the earth - from ocean to ocean -
Crucifixion and from the cross taking down -
We'll give Jesus Christ a true burial,
Israel, with the last one of your sons!
x x x
You, measuring me by the days -
With me, the hot and homeless one,
Did you walk on the flaming squares
Under the giant, burning moon?
And in the tavern filled with plague,
When solemn waltz a screech did make,
Did you not in a drunken fist
My long and piercing fingers break?
With which voice in my sleep do I
Whisper - you heard? - O smoke and ash! -
What can you know of me, since you
With me did not sleep or get trashed?
x x x
August - asters,
August - stars,
August - bunches
Of grapes and ashberry
Rusty - August!
Like a child, August
You play with your apple
Good-natured and full of weight.
Like with hand, with your imperial
Name you do caress the heart:
August! - Heart!
Month of late kisses,
Of late roses and late lightning!
Of the rain beneath the stars
August! - Month
Of the rain beneath the stars!
Don Juan
1
Under the sixth birch
At the corner church
On the frosty dawn
Wait, Don Juan!
But with groom, alas,
And my life I swear,
There is nowhere
In my land to kiss!
We don't have a fountain,
And the well did freeze,
Strict, severe eyes
Does Madonna have.
And so that the beauties
Trifles would not hear
We have loud and clear
Ringing of the bell.
Here I would have lived,
But - I will grow old,
You don't like my world
O the handsome one.
Ah, in a bear coat
It's hard to recognize you,
If not for your lips too,
O Don Juan!
2
Long upon the foggy dawn
The snowstorm did weep.
In a bed of snow they lay
Don Juan to sleep.
No hot stars above his head,
Not a roaring fountain...
Othodox cross is on the chest
Of our Don Juan.
I have brought a Sevillian
Fan, black, so that night
That's eternal, for yourself
Would become more light.
That you'd see a woman's beauty
With your own sight,
I will bring without a doubt
A heart to you tonight.
And for now - from distant lands -
Sleep now, sleep in peace! -
You have come to me. Complete,
Don Juan, is your list.
3
Aren't you tired, after so many roses,
Cities and toasts
To love me? You're almost a skeleton,
I'm almost a ghost.
And why should I know, that you had to call
On a higher power?
And why should I know, that there was smell of Nile
In my hair?
No, I better tell you a tale:
January it was.
A monk with a mask carried a flashlight.
Someone threw a rose.
Someone's drunken voice at cathedral walls
Prayed and swore.
Don Juan of Castille met Carmen
At this hour.
4
Exactly - midnight.
Moon - like a hawk.
"Why - do you peer?"
"Thus - I peer!"
"Do you like me?" "No."
"Do you recognize me?" "Maybe."
"I am Don Juan."
"And I am Carmen."
5
And this Don Juan had Donna Anna,
And this Don Juan possessed a sword.
Of the beautiful, unhappy Don Juan
This from people is the only word.
But I was a clever one today:
I at midnight stepped on roadside,
Someone went along with me in stride
Calling names.
And in fog the staff paled, a strange one..
There was no Donna Anna for Don Juan!
6
And the silk sash is falling
To his feet - a snake heavenly..
And "someday, when she's underground,
You will calm down" they tell me.
I see my profile, old
And arrogant in brocade white.
And somewhere - guitars - guitars -
And youths in a cloak like the night.
And somebody under mask hiding:
"Recognize!" - "I don't know" - "Recognize!"
And the silk sash is falling
On a square round like paradise.
7
And fanning in eyes of the coming
Sadness and sin,
You pass the city - brutally-black,
Heavenly-thin.
Covered with torment, like with fog,
Is your eye.
In loop - a rose, in all the pockets -
Words of love. Aye!
I hear your call over the restaurant
Violin.
I send a smile to you from the distance,
Robber king!
And then I recognize that same look,
Spreading my wings,
With which in Castille at me stared
Your older sibling.
x x x
Above the church there are blue clouds,
A crows' cry...
And pass - the color of ash and sand -
Revolutionary troops... oh my
Blue-blooded, my kingly angst!
They don't have a face, don't have a name -
Nobody sings!
You got lost, the Kremlin ringing
In this banner forest full of wind.
Lie, Moscow, onto eternal sleep, and pray!
To Tsar, on Easter
Open, Open,
The gates of the tsar!
Darkness dimmed and poured out far.
With clean heat
Burns the altar -
Resurrect, Christ,
Yesterday's tsar!
Without glory fell
Two-headed eagle.
Tsar - you were wrong.
He'll remember inheritance
Many more times -
Byzantine sacrilege
Of your clear eyes.
Your judges -
Lightning and wave!
Tsar! God sought
You, not men.
But now there's Easter
In all the land,
Sleep in your village
With a calm mind,
Don't dream of
The banners red.
Tsar! Descendants
And ancestors - sleep.
There is a knapsack since
A throne you won't keep.
Stepan Razin
1
Winds have gone to sleep - with golden dawn,
Night comes - with a mountain of stone,
And with his princess from hot land
Rests the rabid chieftain.
Having gathered his youthful shoulders in a sack
He listened, his forehead leaning back,
How over his hot tent it thunders -
Nightingale's thunder.
2
Over Volga - night,
Over Volga - sleep...
Ornate rugs they have laid down,
And on them the chieftain has laid
With a Persian princess - black brows.
One can't see the stars, one can't hear the waves,
Oars and darkness extreme, this is all!
And the shuttle bears away into the chieftain's
Night sinful Persian soul.
And such a speech
Did the night hear:
Don't you want, at last,
To lie nearer?
Out of all our women
You're the pearl!
Am I this scary
I'm your all-time slave,
Persian girl!
My prisoner!
--------------------
And she knitted the brows,
The long brows.
And she eyes cast down
Eyes Persian.
And from her lips
Only one sigh rings:
Djal-Eddin.
--------------------
And over Volga - a ruddy dawn,
And over Volga - heaven.
And the drunk crowd roars:
Get up, chieftain!
With a Muslim dog you did lie!
See the tears in the beauty's eyes!
And she - like death,
Bit her mouth in blood.
Thus goes a chieftain's brow so hard.
This our bed, you dog, you did not want,
So make do with our baptismal font!
It's dark in the day,
In the sky it is clear.
Red is the shoe
In the ship's rear.
And like menacing oak stands Stepan,
And to very lips pales Stepan.
Ah, so tiring - it shakes, rocks!
Hold up, heathens - in the eyes it's dark!
Here to you is the Persian girl,
The prisoner girl.
3
(DREAM OF RAZIN)
And Razin dreams a dream:
Like a cry of a heron of the swamp.
And Razin dreams a ringing:
Like silver droplets drop.
And Razin dreams of the bottom:
With flowers, like a kerchief, covered.
And he dreams of one face -
Forgotten, with black brows.
He sits, like God's mother,
Stringing pearls on a thread.
And he wants to tell her,
But only moves lips instead...
The breath has been stifled - ah
In the chest there is a glass chip.
And the glass slope walks past them
Like a guard who wants to sleep.
--------------------
Down the Volga-river with
The steering dawn drove he.
Over just a single shoe
Why did you leave me?
Who will want a beauty
In just one shoe?
For the other shoe, friend,
I will come to you!
And rings, rings the bracelet: Drowned
x x x
From a strict and elegant temple
On the squealing of squares you alight.
Freedom! The beautiful lady
Of marquises and Russian knights.
A dreadful rehearsal is on now -
Still ahead is the mass!
O freedom! The partying woman
x x x
Bitterness! On your lips, passion -
Is eternal aftertaste!
Bitterness! It is temptation
For all times - to die at last.
I from bitterness - am kissing
Everyone who's young and sweet.
You from bitterness - another
By the hand at night do lead.
With bread I eat, with water swallow
Bitter woe, bitter sorrow.
There is one such kind of grass,
Mother Russia, on your meadows.
Carmen
1
Divine, childish-plain
The dress is, and short to the plait.
How the sides of a pyramid
Rush sides from the belt.
What big rings there are
On the fingers little and dark!
What big buckles there are
On the tiny shoes!
And people eat and argue,
And people are playing cards.
You do not know, players,
What you have bet on the card!
And she - she needs nothing!
And she - she needs nothing!
Here's my chest. Tear my heart out -
Carmen - and drink my blood!
2
She stands, throwing back the throat,
And bit the mouth in blood.
And set the hand against bosom -
The left one - where there is love.
"On your knees!" - "What to you
Are my knees that I should bend,
Abbot?" With these words
Her last night Carmen did end.
Gypsy Wedding
Dirt flies
From under the hooves.
Shawl like a shield
Over the face.
Newlyweds, have fun
Without the young!
Eh, carry them out,
Disheveled stallion!
We didn't have freedom
Under mother and dad,
The whole field for us
Is marital bed!
Full without bread and without wine drunk -
Thus the gypsy wedding does run!
Full is the glass.
Empty is the glass.
Guitar sound, dirt and moon.
To right and to left swings the den.
Gypsy - to knight!
To gypsy - knight!
Hey mister, careful - it burns!
Thus drinks gypsy wedding!
There, on the shawls'
And fur-coats' heap
There's ringing and rustling
Of steel and lips.
Ringing of spurs,
Necklaces - in return.
Silk has whistled
Under someone's hand.
Someone has howled like a wolf,
Someone like a bull is snoring.
Thus sleeps the gypsy wedding.
x x x
The first day I recall, ferocity of childhood,
Exhaustion and the darkness of the gulp divine,
The carelessness of arms, the heartlessness of heart,
That fell onto the chest, like hawk, like stone.
And now - this time - trembling from heat and pity,
One: to howl like wolf, one: to the feet to fall,
To cast down - understand - penalty for sensuality
Is cruel love and passion terrible.
x x x
Night. North-East. The soldiers cry. Waves roar.
They bombed a wine warehouse. Along the walls,
Through ditches, runs a precious torrent
And in it dances bloody moon.
The trunks of the poplars are mad.
Mad also in the night, birds sing.
Empty, yesterday's monument to the tsar,
And over the tsar's monument - the night.
The harbor drinks, the barracks drink. The world is ours!
Ours is the wine in cellars of the knights!
The whole city, stomping just like bulls,
Falling to murky puddle on the road - drinks.
In cloud of wine - there is the moon. Who's here?
You beauty, be a comrade, drink!
And in the city there's a happy rumour,
That somewhere two have drowned in the wine.
x x x
Strong and wealthy have a hard time,
It is hard to all the lords.
I won't lower the light eyes
A red soldier before.
City's moaning and carousing,
Moon in cloud made of wine.
Not a living soul will touch me:
Kornilov
A Cossack, a Cossack's son...
Thus the speech has begun.
Homeland. Darkness. Foe.
Everyone's heads fall down.
Sound alarm, priests.
"There's no food." "Good."
Not a day should be lost!
A soldier must
To Moscow
1
You did not bend the shoulders, when the red-haired
Impostor seized you and for you did reach.
Where is your pride, you baroness? Your blush,
You beauty? Brilliant girl, your speech?
Like Tsar Peter, the law of sons despising,
Did lust with avarice after your head -
You answered to the Tsar of Russia truly
As baroness Morozova on the sled.
The fiery drink was not at all forgotten
By lips of Bonapart that were so cold.
The sides of Kremlin all things will endure.
In your cathedral not the first time stands a stall.
2
The thief Grishka did not make you Polish,
The Tsar Peter did not make you German.
"What're you doing, little dove?" "I'm crying."
"Where, Moscow, is your pride?" "It's gone."
"Where are all your doves?" "There is no feed."
"Who bore him away?" "The raven black."
"Where are all your holy crosses?" "Torn down."
"Where are your sons, Moscow?" "Killed."
3
Liquid ringing, meager ringing.
To all sides I'm curtsying.
Cry of infant, cow's roar.
The tsar's daring word.
Lashes' whistling, snow full of blood.
The dark word of Love.
The pigeons' quiet noise.
x x x
In vain, Cavalier de Grie,
Do you dream of the full of beauty,
Autocratic - her self not ruling -
And voluptuous Manon.
From your rooms we are succeeding
In a flock tired and willing.
They recall us not past the evening.
Be obedient - such is the law.
We are coming in from night stormy,
We really need nothing from you,
Except supper - and pearls we need from you
And maybe one more thing - your soul!
Honor and duty, Cavalier - convention it is.
Let God give you a regiment of mistresses!
Showing a readiness in all this.
Passionately loving you
- M.
x x x
Going to war, the word "Marina"
Within your cutlass you did draft.
In your magnificent existence
I was your first one and your last.
A night and pre-dawn I remember
In hell of the soldiers' rail car.
In chest I keep the shoulder pieces
And in the wind I rush my hair.
Don
1
White army, your way's a high one:
Temple and chest - to the black gun.
White and divine is your cause:
Your white body - into sand is tossed.
Not a flock of swans in the sky:
The sacred white army
Melts, melts with white sight..
The last dream of the old world:
Youth - Valour - Vandea - Don.
2
Who has survived will die, who has died will arise.
And now descendants, remember the times long gone:
Where were you? The question will roar like thunder,
Like thunder will roar the answer: On the Don!
"What did you do" "We were accepting torments,
Then grew tired and to sleep had gone.
And in the dictionary the thoughtful grandsons
Before the word "duty" will write the word "Don."
3
Waves and youth - outside the law!
Don has moved - we die - we drown.
We ask the wind of time to bear
To grandsons a wicked rumour:
Yes! Broke the Don's ice!
The white army - Yes! - died.
But with children and wives parting,
But on Don departing,
With a white flock flying onto the block,
We died for one thing: Huts!
On the last church having baptized,
x x x
Hard and marvelous - loyalty till the coffin!
Tsar-like luxury in squares' time!
Firm are the souls and ribs are firm likewise
Where are you, people of days gone by?
With ash equating altar and the throne,
Like a red-haired Tatar the freedom prowls.
Over the ashtrays at the table there's
Fugitive soldiers' and faithless wives' growl.
x x x
O, pitiful exertions of usurpers!
Like sleep, like snow, like death, to all - a shrine.
A ban on Kremlin! There's no ban on wings, and
Therefore - there is no ban upon Kremlin.
x x x
Either soldiers drove into the ground a stake,
Either they covered a face with a red rag,
Either deaf and dumb from punches is the Divine,
Either on Easter they were banned from Kremlin -
Old revelers should sit at the linen,
Birds should crawl, fish should sing, women - reason,
Horse on a horseman should ride out wild,
Wine should be given a newborn child,
Corpses carried out the window, rivers - burn,
In the midnight must arise the red sun,
The groom should forget the betrothed's name...
Ladies should love peasant men.
x x x
Like blood and sweat it is simple:
To people - tsar, to tsar - people.
Like mystery of two it is clear:
The third is the spirit, the two are near.
From the sky tsar is placed on the throne:
That is clear like dream and snow.
To the throne tsar will come again yet:
It is holy like blood and sweat.
x x x
The rich man loved a poor woman,
The scientist loved a dumb woman,
The ruddy man loved a pale woman,
The kind man loved a bad woman,
And the gold a copper coin.
"Where, merchant, is your wealth all?"
"In a wallet that's full of holes!"
"Where, proud one, is what you know?"
"Under a girl's pillow."
"Where are your red cheeks, gorgeous sight?"
"Whitened down in the black night."
"Where is the cross with silver chain?"
"Under the girl's boots again."
Rich man don't love a poor woman,
Scientist don't love a dumb woman,
Ruddy man don't love a pale woman,
Kind man don't love a bad woman,
x x x
I - am. You - will be. An abyss between us.
I drink. You're thirsty. We cannot agree.
Ten years, oh no, a hundred thousand years
Do stand between us. God does not build bridges.
Be! - this is my demand. Let me walk past you
Without violating growth with my breath.
I - am. You - will be. In ten springs from now
You will say "is!" - and I will say "sometime"...
x x x
Dying, I won't say: I was. There's no pity,
The culprits I don't seek. There are more important things on earth
Than passions' storms and the lovers' feats.
Beating against this bosom with a wing,
You, the youthful inspiration's culprit,
I demand this of you: Be!
From obedience I will not exit.
x x x
Like right and left arms, here,
Your soul to my soul is near.
In bliss and warmth we to each other cling
Like right wing and left wing.
But garland rises - and lays the abyss
Between the left and the right wings!
x x x
Inept and aimless is my time:
I ask a beggar for a dime
I proffer cash to rich and famous,
Into the needle ray I weave,
Unto a robber key I give,
With whiting I am blushing paleness.
The bum puts nothing in my palms,
The rich man does not take my alms,
The needle won't let through the ray,
The robber enters without key,
Dumb woman weeps in streams of three
x x x
Who didn't build homes with his hand
Does not merit the land.
Who the homes did not build
The earth will not be:
Ash - Straw..
x x x
Cradle, that is wound up in red!
Cradle, that is rocked by the rabble!
Soldiers' thunder - by the evening - past the temples..
And beautiful grows up the kid.
With the milk of Ryazan's wet nurse
He sucked in inheritance's goods:
Flag - and the tri-unity of God.
Russian anthem - and Russian space.
In the needed day, by clear sun of God,
He'll recall duty filial and noble -
Cradle, that is rocked by the rabble!
Cradle, that is wound up in red!
x x x
I don't disturb, I do not sing
With a woman's poison. Hand
That is loyal I give to you -
Right one, that will hold the pen.
That, with which I form the cross
In the beauty of the night.
That, with which the things that God
Did command to me I write.
My left hand is daring,
Flattering and also sly.
Here to you the righteous
And right hand do proffer I.
From Cycle "Comedian"
1
It's not love, but fever! Light
Battle's sly and full of lies.
Now it's nauseous, next day sweet,
Now he's dead, next day alive.
Battle rages. Both are laughing:
How intelligent are they!
By both heroine and hero
I am charmed in every way.
Viewer, a battle - or a dance now?
This a sword - or cattle stick?
Step ahead - three steps back now,
Three steps forward - one step back.
Mouth like honey, in the eyes, trust,
But already raised, the brow.
It's hypocrisy, not love now,
It is acting, and not love!
And result of these (parentheses -
Uncommitted so far) sins -
Will be of astounding poems
A stack oh-so-very thin.
2
You can't be friends with me, you can't be loving me!
O beautiful eyes, look carefully!
A longboat has to sail, and the mill has to turn.
Is it for you to stop a heart as it whirls?
The notebook by the hand - you won't be lord up high!
Is't not enough at comedy to sigh?
The cross of love is heavy - and we won't touch it.
Yesterday's day is gone - and we will keep it.
3
Your mouth is perfect for kisses, so tender..
And this is it, I am totally like a beggar.
Who am I now? Alone? No, thousand!
A conqueror? No, a conquest!
If this be love - or if this be adoring,
A pen's caprice - or else an axiom,
If this be torment for the angels' home -
Or little bit of pretense - by the calling.
Sadness of soul, charming of eyes, or
The script of pen - is not it all the same,
How and until these lips will claim
Your mouth, perfect for kisses, so tender.
4
You do not hope - how I am merry!
They're dull after the revelry.
You are the mister, I - the lady.
And mainly I am just like thee!
Don't be deceived! By evil chill
Within the throat you yourself know
That for your lips I had become
Just from the hills of Champagne, foam.
There are revelries full of gold.
And just is this my revelry:
Without the syrup of love's truth -
Champagne of love's lies only.
From Cycle "Poems to Sonya"
1
Who has left - let him sing!
Heart, Sing away!
Now the ruddy mouth is mine,
Yours - next day.
Ah, but everyone is friend
Of rose-beauty.
There are many such like you
And like me.
Friend will tear from a friend
Flower rose -
Rose can be torn apart: there's
Nothing worse.
Over the pink mouth to fight
Rather than -
Better is to kiss the boy
In his turn !
Friend has hundred girlfriends -
We're all here.
While he is not taken yet
Do love him.
2
In the forest a bird chirped,
Under window, organ grinder.
"You're a liar, traitor,
You're a traitor, liar."
Singing in the chorus
Devils from a barrel:
"All of you, my girl,
I sold for a dollar."
Cows in the grass:
"You are having amoo-ours!"
Sheepdogs in an alley:
"Fool, aurs, aurs."
Lady with a beard
Thought herself to drown:
"That is nothing, babe!
Water'll bear you down!"
Comb your hair now,
Wash out your clear eyes.
One dear threw you down
And another'll raise!
3
The rain is knocking at my window.
The worker creaks at the machine.
I truly once was a street singer
And you were a nobleman's son.
I sang about the evil fortune,
And from the golden handrail
You gave not ruble and not kopeck -
You gave me as a gift a smile.
But the old knight the plan discovered:
He tore the medals from his son
And servant-lackey he did order
To chase the woman from the yard.
And I got drunk within that night, too!
But in the world that's happiest
I was the daughter of a nobleman
You were a singer on the street.
x x x
You won't chase me away anytime:
They don't push away the spring!
With a finger you won't push me away:
I too tenderly sing before sleep!
Never will you make me glorious:
Water for lips is my name!
You will never leave me either:
Door is open, empty is your home!
x x x
To rule troika and guitar
Means: to rule each over
Woman, means: with old beer
To circle overhead!
O handsome one! Halfbreed!
Who baptized you? In what font?
All the gypsy snowstorms
Opened up your vest
O the brave guitarist!
Eh, I fear - your strings and hollows
Will discard me down to lie!
God be with you, driver Sergei!
x x x
That same youth, and these same holes,
And the same nights at the fire...
Sister of your own guitar
Is my divine, holy lyre.
To circle souls just like a snowstorm -
One is the gift that us befalls.
Into my sleeping crib is lowered
This title: Stealer of souls!
Breaking the arms in angst, you know:
Not one alone in the day's fog
With poison gypsy broth of parting
The young noblemen you do drug.
Know: not alone on the sharp knife
You look with anguish in your blood
Know, I'm alone still... we are sisters
In the great lowliness of love.
x x x
Who's made of stone, who's made of mud,
And I'm made from silver and shine.
My act is betrayal, my name is Marina,
The fragile sea foam am I.
Who is made from mud, who is made from flesh -
There's coffin and coffin plates..
Baptized in a sea font and unceasingly
Broken in my flight!
Through every heart, through every net
Will poke its head my will.
You will not make me the salt of the earth
Can you see these my loose curls?
I resurrect with each wave, pounding
Against your granite knees!
May be well the foam - the high foam -
x x x
I wrote on paled leaves of the fan
And on the board of slate
And on the river and sea sand, On
glass with a ring and on ice with skates -
And on the trunks, a hundred winters old,
And in the end - that everyone would know
That you are loved! Loved! Loved! Loved! -
I signed with a celestial rainbow.
How yet I wanted this, that each would bloom
For centuries with me! Under my fingers!
And how thereafter I crossed out the name
My forehead on the table yonder leaning.
But you, within the arm of sellout scribe
Pressed down! You, why you sting my soul?
Not sold by me! Inside the ring!
You - in the tablets will stay whole.
Two Songs
1
And what to him is a chilled fire,
To whom the parting is a trade!
With one wave it has been brought near,
Removed with yet another wave.
Would I not with a servile anger
After my dear with a crawl creep -
I, borne to term within the belly
Not of my mother but the sea!
Bite, my dear friend, just like an apple
The entire sphere of the earth!
Conversing with a swelling water,
With me however you converse.
Like virgin born upon this planet
Won't cross the arms swinging free -
Daughter, carried within the belly
Not of your mother but the sea!
No, our girls do not weep, do not
Write, do not wait for news, yet
No, once again I go out fishing
Without drag-net, without a net!
What power is in my singing -
I alone do not know, you see -
I, borne to term within the belly
Not of my mother but the sea.
Such is my estate: I give
And give - for a whole century!
I am breaking my chest as I'm breaking
The stones that on the shore do lie!
What I mumble on a court simple,
As though I'm an imprisoned queen -
I, borne to term in the belly
Not of my mother but the sea.
2
Yesterday you looked in my eyes,
And all things slant aside right now!
Yesterday you sat before birds
And now all larks turn into crows!
I'm dumb, and you are very smart,
You live, I'm stupefied, I hear.
O cry of women of all times:
"What have I done to you, my dear?!"
Tears are to her like water, blood -
Like water, washed in blood, in tears!
Don't wait for trial or mercy: love
Is stepmother, not Mom, it's clear.
Ships bear away the ones we love,
A white road them away does bear...
And stands the moan across all earth:
"What have I done to you, my dear?"
Yesterday you lay at my feet!
Compared to China! When both hands
You forced apart from fists to palms
Life fell out like a rusty cent!
At trial, as killer of a child
I stand - not dear, and full of fear.
And I will say to you in hell:
"What have I done to you, my dear?"
I'll ask the chair, I'll ask the bed:
"Why do I suffer and am poor?"
They answer "He has kissed - now break
Upon the wheel; now kiss one more."
To live he taught in fire itself,
He threw on icy steppes austere!
What did you, dear, do to me?
What have I done to you, my dear?
I know all - do not contradict!
Seeing anew - no more the lover!
Where love no longer does exist,
There Death the gardener comes over.
Itself - why shake the tree? In time
Ripe apple falls itself right here.
For all, for all forgive me please,
What have I done to you, my dear!
x x x
Wind, Oh wind, sweeping away things,
Sweeping tracks until they're gone!
Like a red bird flying, flying
Into foreheads of white stone.
Like a long-legged dog delving
Through the oat-bearing plains. W
ind, that loses his own mind
At a skirt that's made of lace!
It's a purple epidemic,
The first missive of revolt -
Wind - gallows-bird, flighty man -
In my fist you I now hold!
Play no more on turbid places,
Heads across the snow don't beat -
You are bound in my neckerchief
By your hands and by your feet!
We will settle obligations
For your not-so-careful deeds -
Wind inside red leather coat
x x x
I desire no love and no honor:
They intoxicate - no falling away!
I don't even desire an apple
Tempting - from hawker's tray..
Something drags behind me like chain,
Soon the thunder will sound in the sky...
How I desire - Oh how I desire -
x x x
Others - with eyes or with face full of light,
And I converse with wind in the night.
Not with that Italian Zephyr oh-so-young -
Russian, blow-through,
A good one, a wide one!
Others with all flesh are lost in the flesh,
From dried out lips swallow the breath...
And I - arms wide open - like tetanus - stall
So that the Russian wind blow out my soul!
Others - o tangles tender and strong!
No, Aeolus is doing us wrong.
Perhaps you won't melt! It's just one family
x x x
June and July. Part of nightingale tremble.
And we had something of a bird's way, when
The night of the nightingale then disturbing
We - each over ourselves - were frozen.
August is tsar. It cares not for a roulade,
It only wants October cannonade.
August is tsar. You do not need the tsars,
And I without the tsar such ones don't need!
x x x
There's officer's straightness within my stature,
There's officer's honor within my ribs.
I go to all torments without being stubborn:
A soldier's patience there is!
As if we had corrected this step
Sometime with a butt and with steel...
Not in vain, not in vain the Cherkessian waist
And the tight buckle of belt.
My dear father! Open the gates of heaven
With a storm - when the dawn I feel!
As if deliberately for the hike bag
Of shoulder width.
All can - some insane cripple over the cradle
Has sung me a song... From this day
Something persisted, remained and is here:
I take the word - and take aim!
And thus does my heart over Russian Republic
Screech - you can feed, or no way! -
As if I myself had been officer also
Wolf
Then a friendship, now a duty.
Brother wolf, God be with you!
Our friendship is now dying:
I'm not gift but debt for you.
Disturb a verst with a verst,
Send a verst into a verst!
I have petted on a fur - And
I have been missing angst!
I'm not making you a villain -
Not your guilt, it is my sin:
With my insatiability
I am feeding everyone!
To go after you with silicon
Fire in forest - thus judged Lord -
Girls are jealous of just one thing:
That the paws would not grow cold.
To hold - I won't move a finger:
Finger - not pole, great is wood.
Take away with you your gray spots,
Brother fang, be with you God!
Fare thee well, I won't remember
In my dreams, you, O gray hide!
To believe in the wolf's grayness
To a Stranger
Your banners - not mine!
Our heads apart.
Not to betray in the Snake's vice
My Pigeon - Spirit.
Not to start in a red round dance
Around a May tree.
Higher than all earthly gates
Are heaven's gates to me.
Your victories - and not mine!
Others in hallucination!
We aren't on two ends of the Earth -
On two constellations!
What am I doing - we're jealous
Of two different stars -
I, throwing over the bridge
With a brave arm?!
Treasure more precious than the icons
I have with me.
There is another law, covering
The laws - you hear?
Before him all wedges incline,
Dim precious stones.
The law of a stretched-out arm,
Flung open soul.
And we'll be judged with the same
Measure, know.
And heaven in which I believe
x x x
O love! O love! In the convulsions, in the coffin,
I'll be on guard - entice - worry - and tear.
Not in the snow mound of the coffin, nor a snow mound
Of cloud, I will part with you, O my dear.
And not for this are given to me gorgeous
Two wings that weight upon my heart would lie.
Pathetic village of the eyeless, voiceless,
And swaddled I will never multiply.
No, I wheedle the arms! Your sturdy body
From out your cloth I'll beat out with one blow,
Death! For a thousand kilometers all around
The wood is burned and melted is the snow.
And if I'd let you drive me to the churchyard -
Pressing the shoulders, and the wings and knees -
It is so that, laughing over the ashes,
I'll rise like poem - or bloom like a rose!
x x x
Either at dawn or at dusk, I will die, but on which
One of the two - can't be told from the orders, I know.
Ah, could it be that my torch could go out twice again!
At the same time at dusk and at dawn it would go!
Heaven's daughter! With a full apron of roses! Not a sprout
Violating! Went through earth in a dancing gait!
I'll die at dusk or at dawn, this I know! God won't send
After my soul like a swan the hawk-like night!
Driving away the unkissed cross with a tender hand,
In the kind sky I will seek the last greeting, I know it.
Slit of the dawn - and the slit of a smile in response...
Even in hiccup of death I will still be a poet!
x x x
Happy New Year, swan demesne!
Ruins so glorious!
Happy New Year - in foreign lands -
Knapsack-bearing warriors!
Red pursuit, mouth foaming,
Not caught up, will dance,
Happy New Year - homeland,
Beaten in the race!
Sings with a toast song the whole Earth
To the earth do lean!
Thus, Igor - weeps with Yaroslav
Russia over the sea.
Moaning tiredly, quenches sorrow:
My brother! My knight! My son!
Happy New Year, beyond blue seas
Student
To say - to be thoughtful of what?
In rain - under one coat,
At night - under one coat, later
To grave - under one coat.
1
To be your light-haired little fellow -
Oh, through all years! -
To drape a student behind your dusty purple
In cloak severe.
To catch through people's density your sigh
That life does give
With soul that lives with your breath, like a cloak
With blowing wind.
More victorious than King David, with shoulder
The crowd to move.
To serve from all slights, all earthly slights
As cloak to you.
To be he who between the sleeping students
In sleep won't dream.
A shield, and not a cloak, at the first stone
That crowd brought in.
(This verse's not stopped willfully! The knife is
Sharp to no end!)
And - with inspired smile - to be the first your
Fire to ascend.
2
There is an hour - just like discarded clothes:
When in ourselves the pride we quench in full.
The hour of study, it in every life is
Triumphant-unavoidable.
The high hour, when, before the feet of one with finger
Appointed, our weapons laying down,
We change the purple of the warrior
On sand into the camel's down.
Like voice that rises us to our exertion
From self-will of the days, behold this hour!
Behold this hour when we are leaning down
From heaviness just like a ripe corn ear.
And ear grew up, and beat the happy hour,
And for the millstone did thirst the grain.
The law! The law! Still in the womb of earth
The burden I desired does remain.
The hour of study! But beheld and known
Is different light - the dawn still burns, still burns.
Blessed to him are you, following behind him
The supreme hour of loneliness!
3
Evening sun is kinder than
Sun at noon.
Screams fanatically, not warms
Sun at noon.
Meeker, more aloof is the sun
At night. Wise,
It does not want to beat
In our eyes.
Stirring with its simplicity
Made for kings,
Dearer is evening sun
To one who sings.
--------------------
Crucified by darkness
Each evening,
Evening sun does not bow
To the throng.
Thebe, remember! He, cast down
From the throne.
He, cast down - looks above
Not below.
O, don't wait upon the neighboring
Bell tower!
I want to be your final
Bell tower.
4
The wooden load
Below waves fell.
Two eternal ones quietly
Ascended the hill.
Tightly - shoulder to shoulder -
They stand, don't talk.
Two breaths are walking
Under one cloak.
The leader of yesterday's and
Today's sleeping wars
Silently stand by
The double black tower.
They stand wiser than serpents,
Milder than doves.
Father, take me back into
Your life above!
Smoke of the wars of the Lord
Across the sky.
Struggles the cloak, raised
With double sigh.
Prays and trembles, jealousy
Eats out the sight...
Father, take me into sunset,
Into your night!
Breathe deserts, they celebrate
The night's entry...
Son falls like a ripe fruit
Heavily.
Quiet is the human flock
Within its fold.
Calm are the two alit
On hill of gold.
5
We were like ancient ones, the hour
Was wonderful and full.
We side by side ascended up
The hill, I do recall.
The speech of the cascading streams
Has wound fancily
With cloak, falling on the shoulders
In a wave gracefully.
The final gold of the heights
Is higher, higher yet.
The dreaming voice: The sunrise that
Comes out to meet sunset.
6
All magnificence of
Pipes - is but murmur of
Grass - before you.
All magnificence of
Storms - is but chatter of
Birds - before you.
All magnificence of
Wings - is but patter of
Eyelids - before you.
7
On the hills - round and tan,
Under the ray - dusty and strong,
With a boot - meek and mild -
After the cloak - reddened and torn.
On the sands - greedy and rusty,
Under ray - burning and drinking,
With a boot - meek and mild -
After the cloak - with trace and trace.
On the waves - angry and blown-up,
Under the ray - wrathful and ancient,
With a boot - meek and mild -
After the cloak - lying and lying...
Marina
1
His dove to be, like an eagle!
More than a mother to be, Marina!
A messenger - a guard - a courier -
A flag-bearer - flatterer of the court!
With a seraph and dog to guard
A sleep restless and full of fear.
Taking a pack of sallow cards for a game,
Legs in stirrup! - through water and flame!
Where on horse - where to swim - where to crawl!
By the swamp - by the willows - by the reeds -
And where horse does not take - fly, all winds
Having been captured in your shawl!
In a black noiseless whirlwind flying,
Not a lady - a handy, I am!
Not to be sole - the second!
A twin - a double - slender
Godbrother in flame of bonfire,
To be his crooked friend.
Clamor of Kremlin's uninvited guests.
If Basmanov is your name, set
Aside - yield before love!
Threw open a chest kerchief, I.
Arms wide open! That on Judgment Day
He won't stand in Basmanov's blood.
2
Three usurpers' wife,
Daughter of arrogant Mnishka,
You did not birth a son
To your proud one.
In bare-headed sleep
In resounding window flight
You did not wave your hand
To your proud one.
On the square full of fate
From spits and smacks on ear
You did not cover with body
Your own proud one.
In a foolish mask he lay,
With bloody pipe in the mouth.
You did not wipe the sweat
Of your proud one.
Oh the treacherous blood!
Be accursed, be accursed.
You that to false Dimitry was false Marina!
3
Heart, betrayal!
But never parting!
And the tan arm of the thief
To the white lips.
Short concussion of bones on the plates.
Gregory! Dimitry!
Tsar-killers! Blood and fluff!
And - on the spears
With the second jump!
4
"Your chest is redolent,
Just like a rosemary trunk...
A most honorable lady..."
"My young honored one..."
"I'm dark, unrecognized, quiet...
With what shall I repay..."
From underneath the eyelids
Something, "With life!" did say.
In every chased-down
stranger We are serving Christ the Lord.
Mangles in mangled confusion
Handful of genuine pearls.
Pearls have been sprinkled - like tears!
Aiming with every eyelash,
He sees, while stranger picks up
Them, while fidgeting in ash.
From Cycle "Parting"
1
I raise the arms
Thrown down long ago.
Empty arms
In empty black window
I throw in the midnight beating
Of hours - I want
To go home!
Thus: head down from the tower!
Home! In whisper and rustle:
Not on the stone of a square...
My wing was shot
By some young warrior.
2
More sharply, more sharptly
Your arms do twist!
Between us are heavenly
Rivers - not versts,
Between us are parting's lands azure,
Where forever inseparable
Are I and you.
In silver harness
The highway runs.
I don't twist the arms!
Without sound
I only pull them
Like ashberry waves
Into the parting,
Into the stork flock's trace.
Without looking back
The stork flock aspires,
Conceit I won't doff!
In death - well-attired
I'll be - your golden-feathered speed is
The final bulwark
In loss of space!
3
Hide head of bed
Like a dark olive,
Gods are jealous
Of earthly love.
Every rustle
And whisper they hear.
Know, not just to you
The young man is dear.
Someone is mad at
Luxury of May.
Be careful of
The sharp-eyed sky.
--------------------
That rocks and cliffs
Lure him, you conjure,
That call of fame
With voice of copper
Chest on the spear
To depth, lures him?
The rising wave
Drowns him - you think?
Sting of the fortune
Pierced - you see?
Deeper than disgrace
Is tsar's mercy.
That you wander late in the
Low lands you shed tears.
Invisible ones, not the
Earth-born you should fear.
Visible to them
On the comb is each hair.
Gods have a thousand
Eyes to spare.
Fear not the quicksand -
Fear sky's blue!
Insatiable
Is heart of Zeus.
4
Quietly
With an arm careful and thin
I'll untangle the tangles:
Arms - and to neighing
Obedient, will rustle the amazon
On empty and resounding steps of parting.
Stomps his feet and neighs
In the lit flight the winged one. In the eyes -
Flaming of dawn.
Little arms, little arms!
You call in vain:
The staircase of Lethe pours between.
5
Big you won't see,
You won't see me gray.
You won't press the tears
From motionless eyes.
For all of your torment.
Crying is the fight:
Put down your arm!
Leave the coat!
In apathy's
Stone-eyed cameo
Like mothers I won't
Tarry in the door:
(With heaviness of
Blood, knees, eye -
In the final earthly
Time!)
Not as a crawling, wounded beast -
No, as a lump of rock
I'll leave from the door -
Of life. What for
Do the tears pour,
When the stone is lifted
From shoulders of yours?
Not a stone! Already
As wide as an eagle
Is the cloak! And already by river of azure
Into the city of light, where
The mother
To take her kid
Would not dare.
[6]
With silver growth
He tore up and away.
That Zeus would not
See him - Pray!
At the first rustle
Be fearful and stand.
They're jealous of
Beauty of man.
Their call is scarier
Than jaw of a beast.
Jealous of beauty
Is the gods' nest.
With flowers, with laurels
They'll lure up and away.
That Zeus would not
Choose him - Pray!
Thundering with eagles'
Wings is the sky.
With all chest shatter -
That you won't hide.
In eagles' thunder -
O beak! O blood!
The tiny lamb
Is hanging - Love..
Bare-headed,
With chest - prostate..
That Zeus would not
Raise him -
Pray!
[7]
Your......features
Imprinted by beginning.
I'll become older, and you
Will stay just as young.
Your......features,
Sharpened by burning wind.
I'll be hunched over, and you
Will elegantly stand .
Midday shade of the hair,
That to my gray spots lean...
My age, day to day, year to year,
You will sometime become my son...
Together we were thirty-six
A beautiful pair we were...
And - with a rainbow - a good news:
.................. - I won't get old!
[8]
The final beauty,
Last heaviness yet:
The child, hitting palms
At my feet.
But this final beauty
I'll take care of no less
And I'll throw down this
Last heaviness
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Stinging with inspired
Women's flattery,
As if not a teen but
A lover at the feet -
About the wanderings -
Along the amazed Universe
Under the laurel rain,
Under the oak rain.
The beauty final,
The heaviness final -
The child, the cloak grasping..
In torment born! When you'll tell the people
That there was no equal
George
1
Eyelashes, eyelashes
Bowing down.
With the shame of eyelashes
Eclipsed - suns in the arrows' crown!
How clear and how loud!
And his cloak was red
And white was his stallion.
Embarrassed is the rider,
Proud is the stallion.
On the dead serpent
The whitest stallion
Looks in half-turn.
In wide half-window
After a spear
Into the red jaw - the nostrils wildly blows -
And slants, eyes of fire.
The rider's embarrassed,
The horse comes down.
The deceased serpent's
Accursed blood -
Amber-colored - with light gait
He avoids - the amber blood flows.
Raising a hoof, he freezes - from the heights
Of the swan turn.
Meek is the horseman,
Fastidious is the horse.
With a spear having
The rattling serpent pierced -
Since you're modest and languid!
In the winds - up high - is the heart of yours,
At the river edge - the spear of yours
Now sings at the waxen fingers
At the pink lips
Under cover of arrows
Of eyelashes,
Sings, shouts. -
O fearful heaviness
Of deeds done!
And his cloak is red
And white is his stallion.
The lovely horseman
Awake, stallion!
The tender horseman
Has a chest pain.
Threads the pearls with eyelashes...
The holy icon - is face of yours,
With sunset ray - the spear of yours
From long fingers splashes.
Does he mow down with a spear
The ray that's purple?
Or the red cloud
Rises like mantle?
The white house.
He will be
Let in
With the horse.
The horseman leans,
The horse stands on hind legs.
The palm around the spearman is weaker.
Now he will bring victory!
Stirs - moves - and after the spear
Into the amber puddle - after the horse
That slipped away.
The base sweep
Of arrows...
Red is the mantle, white is the horse.
2
O heaviness of success!
Slight of victory!
George, you cry,
Like a beautiful lady
You pale at the deed
Of your two
Suddenly alien to you
Hands.
Horse is squeamish of the serpent,
You are squeamish of the voice
Of victory. Like heavy oil
The blood pours.
The dragon sleeps.
Sated for the rest of your life
You are.
The sun is eclipsed
By the lifted mantle.
Union of child's bashfulness
With the dignity of
Horse.
From the saddle -
Into the sky -
Bush.
Fastidious sorrow
Of mouth.
Horse is squeamish of the serpent,
You are squeamish of the present
Of the tsar - her engagement fire.
Of the church frankincense;
Strict - harsh -
In the pitiless
Roar of
Pipes.
Trumpet! Trumpet!
It's not long left to hear.
The tender victory reed - away.
The one out-piped away
Drooped - went quiet.
And cloudy -in height! -
Post.
Bow, bow,
Obedient grass!
Reddened under the slap of glory -
Pales. - Home, trumpeters! - He sleeps.
Until the judgment trumpet -
Is full.
3
Celestial glow
And blue versts!
Glory George
The Victorious!
Pearly branches
Of midnight, proclaim
The clean youth
The marvelous man:
His fiery mantle,
His spear's song
Glory the blood-boiling
Stallion.
--------------------
O great masts
And each proud village!
Glory the thundering-
Boiling George!
In strength and in meekness
Like sun he'd be.
Honor of honor,
Luxury's luxury.
His towering height,
His spear's song,
Glory his lightning-tailed
Stallion!
Winds of the lion
And mass of the church!
Glory the
Magnificent George!
Having killed the serpent,
Over death having won,
Entering his lady's home
On a stallion!
His great momentum,
His spear's song,
Glory his transformed
Stallion!
--------------------
Flattering willows
And leaning grass,
The freedom-loving
And full of class
Youth - glory,
Youth - bemoan...
Here is he, on the grass
That is warrior of heaven:
His pink mouth
Its two halves there are -
Couldn't bear victory
The victory-bearer.
4
The feathers from the clouds nodding away...
How your arrogance to convey,
George! Creature of powers of heaven!
How to convey enslaved fervor of a pupil,
And of a sober blown-up nostril,
At the full trot the curbed confusion.
Before the beauty most filled with delight
How to convey - from the archangel heights
The saddles and the spears of deed done
And these arrows of eyelashes - virginity
Wrathful - the coat of ebony -
Piercing - we are not of one bone!
Having completed witnessing God's missive,
How to convey, George, how you were evasive -
That you have touched the ground barely -
A bow - and how the hole at once,
Piercing-crooked, filled with ice:
Oh, don't be grateful! He followed orders, squarely.
5
From the archangel height of the seat
To do evangelic deeds.
River burns, dark for miles far hence.
O distance! Distance! Distance!
In piercing straightness of the lashes of the eye
With a firestorm onto the birds to fly.
The hooves! The wings! Bound up tight!
O height! Height! Height!
To open eyes like jaw! Like gear
Beyond clouds to disappear!
And not to come to wits - to fall and die:
O desire! Desire! Desire!
6
And I need no girl.
By the cold of will,
By the trace of blue
I will alone go.
Widowed and an orphan
You were till I conquered.
By the willing trace
Of rushing spring water.
I'll wash away feats
From the glory, from pus.
In your glory I'll
Give drink to the horse.
Keep, little dove,
The sprouts from hail,
The girl from the serpent,
The hero from the girl.
7
O, by every wind
Shaken lotus!
George's shyness,
George's kindness...
The childish - severe - deadly importance
Of gigantic eyes
Wide and moist.
Thus deadly torment
From the rags peers.
And the excessive
Weight of a spear
Not here - with a proud
Laugh, full of height:
George most mild,
George most quiet.
Most bitter - candle of my vigils - George,
Most mild - with eyes of a deer - George!
(The deer that's forgiven
The trembling pack).
To whom did the day
Of George strike the clock.
O my lotus!
My swan!
Swan! My deer!
You're all my vigils of night
And all my dreams beside!
You my Easter psalm!
You my final altar!
You more than my son
And more than my tsar!
My azure eye -
In the height!
You, having raised again
Your escaped wife.
So listen!
[8]
With thorn, not with laurel
As a king crowned,
In a saddle - with wings!
Around the shape narrow
On the black velvet
Maltese gold is.
Unbreakable thorn
Needles - a vow
To friend and God.
High bending
Of a swan, on the side
A Maltese sword.
The knight of Maltese
Order - George,
Midst sleepers - aware.
The knight of Maltese
Order - George,
Good Tidings
1
Into the treasure chest
Of the midnight depths
I let down
A steady hand.
Amid seaweed
There's no sight of him!
My treasure-chest
Is not in the sea!
Into the singing height
Clouds beyond -
With double thunder
I get brave - and now
A lark has dropped
From the height for me -
That you're not beyond cloud,
That you're beyond sea!
2
Alive and well!
Louder than thunder -
Like with an axe -
Joy!
No, with an axe
Not enough: with a bull
Under the butt
Of happiness!
Stunned.
Afraid.
What in exchange -
Will they tear away?
And from the knees
All the way to the roots
Of standing hair -
Terror.
So it is, alive?
Shutting one's eyes,
Breathing, they call -
Hear?
Did the ship go away?
Oh my crane
In the whole flock
Youngest!
Resurrected once died?
Cutting out sigh
A stone from the sky,
Breaking
Over the head -
No, till the hilt
Sword into chest -
Joy!
3
Not hunching under sorrow,
Under the stone - winged - as
An eagle - having stayed whole,
The double sadness
Of earthly mothers
And heavenly mistresses
Having raised on the shoulder -
Hot Maltese steel
Was left to me!
But the wrathful sky
To the eagles - favorably.
Is this not a dream: in the waves
Multitude of horse angels!
Between them - hosanna! -
My - whiter than snow...
Lily chausibles,
Horse will carry out! -
Foaming lops on a mantle.
Wave will carry out! -
Block standing up...
God will carry out... -
Oh!
4
Over the sleeping youth - golden spurs.
Command: Up high!
Back at the heels the crowd of robbers.
George, cry!
With a free left hand you're feeling the cross.
Command: swim!
Rule, that to the last one they come under
The cupola Sofian!
We're lost! The joints will not bear!
The end! - Give up!
With double lightning it opens the wings.
Command: up!
5
In the name of massacre
Hold tight, my one with wings!
There was an hour of crossing
And will be - of getting even.
In that ton-and-half hour
Between fact and dream
Heavily paddled
The ship's wings.
Between Charybdis - yes! -
And Scylla paddled away.
Oh my wings,
The ships-cranes!
Then on the steep
Shore of Euxene
Stomped those who escaped,
Will - those who win.
In that hour exhausting
Between mud and muzzle
The wings did not weaken,
The hearts did not chill,
The shoulders were pressing,
In guard eyes remained.
O these wings of mine,
The ships-cranes!
Not given to offend
Narrow-faced little birds,
It was said - a she-eagle's
Heart of Taurides.
With many a letter
Onto cry long-beaked
The gray-haired Monarchian
Mom did awake.
And here's the Sofian
Cupola - far away...
O these my wings,
The ships-cranes!
Bear! Dark constellation
Will shiver up high.
The vengeance will come
Not from sea, from the sky.
Look: having been poured
With lead of heaven,
The flock of ships
Is menacing, heavy.
And there is no end to it,
There is no land...
O these my wings,
Return of Rain
Horse - lame.
Sword - rusty.
Who - now?
Leader of crowds.
Step - hour,
Sigh - century,
Look - down.
All - there.
Foe. - Friend.
Thorn. - Laurel.
All - dream...
He. - Horse.
Horse - lame.
Sword - rusty.
Cloak - old.
Stature - straight.
x x x
Into the ether
Leads the path.
Stop, now!
Blind is youth.
Higher, all higher!
Into blue rye!
Stop, now!
To Mayakovsky
Above crosses and pipes,
Baptized in fire and smoke,
The heavy-footed archangel -
Eternal Vladimir, hello!
He's the rider and he's the horse,
He's the right and he's the whim.
He sighed, and spat into the palms:
Hold tight, the dray fame!
The singer of plaza wonders -
Hello, one grimy and proud,
That he chose the heavy stone
And was not swayed by the diamond.
Hello, the thunder of stones!
He yawned, saluted - and again
He paddles with shaft - with the wing
From cycle "Khan's Prison"
1
The Khan's prison
Having fully tried,
I beat with the wing
To escape-god.
Profitable god
Fast god
Spurs in the side - god!
To inform
With word and sign,
Lay them to sleep
With poppy and vine,
Darkness and home be,
Word and sign be,
Stump and ditch be -
That all winds in the chest beat!
A black god,
Raven-god,
Midnight-beats-god.
With a comb-slant,
With a stone-grass
Over the slanting -
Yuck - Tatars!
My horse the ground don't touch,
My foreheads the stars don't touch,
My breath my lips don't touch,
Rider-horse, finger-palm.
A horse god,
Sleepy god,
Crowbar in forehead - god!
To the fast legs -
Strength and bravery!
That would be sung
In villages for centuries:
Of escaped and barefoot - god,
Of bare-headed - god,
Flight, splash, whip, whipped - god,
Devil on the oars - god.
Cry - god,
Whip - god,
Headlong - god!
2
There is no trivet
And no fire.
Take me, take me!
With the Tatars
He will from me
Eat the horse bone.
Accompany,
The milestone!
"Where, quickness,
Is cross-your-chain?"
"Under khan's boots
Is cross-my-chain.
My town's in blood,
Chest without cross -
Adopt me,
Mother-versts!"
"Where, orphan,
Is your load-home?"
"Hearth - under ribs,
Under saddle - home,
My khan - Mamai,
My bread is angst.
To old one in heaven,
Church's porch-versts!"
"Why are you, beauty,
Strict to the khan?"
"Strict to the khan?
Memory's long.
My khan - like stone,
Moscow - like hole.
To angel's camp,
Versts-tablecloth!"
3
Your trace is untrammeled,
A crown is your tuft.
The burst and the crier
Screech under the hoof.
An incompetent fire,
An untravelled path, there. -
An unshod horse
Oh Russia-mother!
Your cotton's not selling,
Your goon has no arms.
A hook's in your mansion
And a trough with no charm.
I'll eat lots of bark -
Not a marvel it was!
Oh Russia-mother,
Spellbound horse!
Don't jump up - don't sit!
And once sat - do not blame!
But one horseman, Mamai,
For your taste is game!
A slanting vileness,
A thief's palm...
The unconfessed stallion,
Praise to Aphrodite
1
Blessed are the ones that left your daughters, Earth,
To fight in wartime battle and to run,
Blessed are the ones that having never tried
Comfort went to the fields Elysian.
Thus grows the laurel - writer of the years,
Heater of battle, sober, with harsh leaves.
I will never exchange for bitter fate of love
The friendship's over-the-clouds cliffs.
2
Already gods' - not the same generosity,
Upon the river's shore, not the same one.
Fly, fly again, the doves of Aphrodite
Into wide open gates of setting sun.
I'll leave in day, in which there is no count,
Lying upon the sand that's growing cold...
I've outgrown my youth and look upon it
Like snake that's looking at his skin of old.
3
In vain, inside the promised branches hiding,
Your tender retinue thunders above.
I drop a myrtle that did love so many,
I drop the belt that did so sweetness love.
With a dumb arrow that is heavily piercing
Freed me from these my shackles your own son.
Thus at the very throne of my calmness
You born of foam, as a foam be gone!
4
How many, how many of them, white and blue
Eat from the hands!
Whole kingdoms are clucking around your lips
O Lowliness!
In gold of cup the deadly sweat
Does not translate.
The mantle-wearing general will vanish
Like dove of white.
Every cloud like a chest circles
In a bad hour.
There is your visage, O she-devil, in
Each perfect flower.
You fleeting foam, the salt of the sea..
In torment and foam -
For what reason should I obey
Youth
1
This my youth! O this my alien youth!
This my alien youth, my boot unpaired!
Purposefully narrowing the inflamed eyes,
Thus a leaf from calendar they tear.
From among your very acquisitions
Nothing took away the thoughtful Muse.
You were both a burden and encumbrance
To me. I don't ask you back, my youth.
You whetted the arrows in the nighttime,
You whispered within the night with comb.
I have suffered for the sins of others
Pressed down with your generosity, like stone.
Your scepter before its time returning -
Of what use is evidence to the soul!
O my youth! My tired youth you are!
You my tattered rag that once was whole!
2
Soon from swallows - into sorcerers!
Youth! We will say farewell before then...
We will stand in the wind soul to soul!
My tan one! My sister console!
With a skirt of raspberry flare,
You my youth! My dove you are
Tan! Waste of my soul!
You my youth! Dance and console!
Wash me with a shawl of azure,
My insane one! We have played with you
For a plenty! Dance a while and spar!
My gold - farewell - amber!
For a reason your arms touch I,
Like to a lover I say goodbye.
Torn away from depths within my breast -
Muse
No awards, no forefathers,
Not a falcon clear.
She goes and is torn away -
She is so far!
Underneath tan eyelids
A golden-winged flame.
Forgotten once she took it
With a windswept arm.
An un-picked-up skirt,
A rag that went bare.
I'm not kind, not mean
But like this: so far.
Does not fuss or cry:
Tore - and therefore dear!
You gave - and forgotten
With a windswept arm.
With a scream and with a throat's
Scattering, forgot...
So distant as she is
x x x
Without self-control
With complete meekness.
Light and soft is
Air over abyss.
Growing at once,
Like lightning - in time,
As if by order
There will be a blossom.
Answering stars,
With a snake hair...
Himself defenseless -
Not a flame-bearer!
He to me? I to him?
I'll try, I know.
Without intent
x x x
Thus swam the head and lyre down
To the receding far-off place.
And lips repeated: pity, pity,
And the lyre enounced: "Peace"
Bloody-silver, silver-and-bloody
And double trace she did then pour,
My tender brother, my dear sister
Along the paralyzed Gebr.
At times, the movement of head slowed
Inside the unabated angst.
But lyre assured: do pass me near!
And lips behind her said, "Alas!"
Moving together like a garland
With far-off rippling head of bed -
Do not the hair pour with silver?
Does not the lyre pour with blood?
Thus, with a staircase descending
Of river - into crib of swells.
Thus, to new island, where it's sweeter
Than somewhere - lies a nightingale...
Where then are they, the holy remnants?
The salty wave - respond, respond!
Maybe the net has pulled it out,
x x x
Not for flattering chausibles, frocks of lies -
I was born in this world with loud voice!
Wide awake - not the night dreams for me!
I don't live, like you, whisperingly!
From you, whisper-whisper, I have -
Lyre, lyre, a swan's curve!
With laurel, with dawn, with winds one
I make merry, I'm not a nun!
And the boy - is fair-haired, is not dumb!
And especially to wrong side it has gone -
From you, whisper-whisper, I have -
Lyre, lyre, a swan's curve!
Heavy, I hear, is woman's role!
I don't know - did not put on the scale!
My product is a gift, not for sale,
But with blueness will run my nail -
From you, scream-and-wheezing, I have -
x x x
Woman's chest! The soul's frozen breath -
Woman's reason! Wave, that by surprise
Was caught - and always by surprise
Having caught up to you - seen by God's eyes!
Playpen of the despising and despised
Has quieted. - Woman's chest! - Yielding was
An armament! - I am thinking of those...
Of those girlfriends - those one-breasted ones!
From Cycle "Girlfriend II"
To never-quiet Ave,
To Easter feast -
A beautiful glory
Of girlfriend last.
1
Sleeps, merriment, your torment,
Sleeps heart's suffered heaven so.
Over the Iverian cradle -
Blessed! - Allow to go slow.
Not my fussiness, not envy
Brought me home - do not forbid!
I came like shepherds in the village
To give the glory to your kid.
Not by the same star witnessed?
O silver-fake gold-mica!
Like dug in - look - over the house,
Like dug in - look - star!
I am not joyous and do not envy
I look - and a saw to my heart,
What is it to your son I am giving?
Here is my cloak - here is my staff.
2
Like in a precious chausible
In infant tears,
You're blessed in your wives!
You're blessed, dear!
Near to the lonely roadside cross
Your eyes you open.
(He was an orphan just as well -
Fatherless son).
Like in a precious chausible
In infant tears,
You're blessed in your tears!
You're blessed, dear.
Clear, unconcerned over the sleeping
Bird is your forehead.
The good news' bearer was your crown,
And also your bed.
Shivering and tree your stature is
Over the sleeping bird.
The good news' bearer was his dad -
Be joyful, girl!
Like in a precious chausible,
In heaven's snow
Blessed in snow you have been!
You're blessed so.
3
A giant stroke of a wing,
Breath whips - in wives
You are blessed,
In wives, alive.
Where's messenger? It's wild and white.
A wing? A crown?
Where's messenger? Message and wing
By snowstorm blown.
4
With what to deserve you and give back your due -
Blessed forever! Babe's mother you!
Over the dragnet growing with glass
Again repeating: Light from the east!
From his blue eyes to stars of blue
Having thrown a rainbow as a bridge, you!
------------------
I don't fall! I don't fall! I swim far
And - as a rainbow - bridge over Nieva.
Life-giver in hour of the end!
Affirmer of kingdoms! Mother of Son!
In wheeze of his torments - in a song that's bad!
You childlike threw a shout: "I am!"
Bethlehem
Two poems that accidentally did not go into "Poems to Blok"
To Blok's son Alex
1
Not with silver I came,
Not with amber I came,
Not as a king I came,
As a shepherd I came.
Here's air of hills of mine,
Here's of two eyes of mine
Sharp gaze - and of fires
Red glare and of dawns of mine.
Where's wax - that is the fur?
Through hole I won't turn!
Poorer than all -
But ahead of all!
Behind a camel a camel
See: on that round hill,
See: walking are the kings,
See: they are bearing bins.
O - after - far!
2
Three kings,
Three bins
With precious gifts.
The first bin -
All the earth
With indigo seas.
Second bin:
Noah within
With an ark with beasts.
And within?
That third bin?
What is there, my king?
Gives the king,
"Holy's my light"
Don't know what it means
Ahead - king,
Mom - behind,
x x x
S. E
How comes into the middle
In battles of the Don -
Thus my dream is with you
In cities over the ocean.
For the paper dust they'll take
Bookcase from the wall.
All's for sale, and nonetheless
Memory's not for sale.
In a green wood full of firs
There's no such straight pine.
You and me, that is because,
From one cradle come.
Not for thousand fates - we're born
For one, you and me.
Nearer than bread to the palm -
Thus do we agree.
Fire and flood did not bear off
Finger of gold made!
In those sleepless hours we are
Nearer than to forehead, hand.
My widowhood will not accept
Neither miller, nor flour.
An inviolable bond:
In one crib we were.
In my chest my watch, once wound,
Did not rust, you know.
There's autocracy within
The red Russia, know.
May the whole world come to end -
At night service I will stand.
Thus with you before the wall -
As to others with a garland.
And now, keen before me, you!
Brothers, do not yawn!
Thus together we come at night:
Our crib was one. Top
x x x
She is unusual all the way! Beyond power!
He forgot! Do not accuse me so far!
You're blessed by God! To say he did will -
You're blessed by God! And beyond, so level
A satin stitch... Stand: wives between
You're blessed by God... And beyond ringing
So jubilant... little child, hear:
You're blessed by God! - And silence out far
To Akhmatova
Your stripe will be harvested
By which person's arms?
O the black magician you!
My black-plaited one!
Your tumultuous century,
And your midnight days...
All your little workers are
At once born away.
Where are your campaigner friends,
Your comrades in arms?
O the black magician you,
My one with white arms!
Not with glory, not with tears
Can one heal those graves.
One, as though he had been choked,
Walked around alive.
One more went into a wall
Himself to advance.
(He was proud - a falcon!) -
They Knocked him out at once.
High above your brothers are!
Can't exude a cry!
O the black magician you,
My one with clear eyes!
And from out the cloud (praise
Marvel from above!)
Arrow of a falcon falls,
Arrow of a dove...
To know, in two feathers at once
People to you write,
Know, that soon you will receive
A certificate,
O the boulders! They will shake
With their wings,
O the black magician you!
New Year's
S E
Brothers! In the last hour
Of year - after our
Russian land, living in us!
Exactly twelve times
Mug to mug!
After the rabble of honor,
After Taman, after Kuban,
After our Russian Don,
Jordan of old faith... Once more,
Mug to mug!
Comrades! Alive still is
Mother - Passion - Russia!
Comrades!
Whole still is
In the hearts - Russia!
Brothers! Into the distance look in!
Delvig and Pushkin,
The deeds' and the hearts' crystal...
Gloriously, like steel on steel -
Mug to mug!
Brotherhood's glorious gown -
For our brother town
Prague - till - crunching
Ring out, Bohemian country! Ring,
Mug to mug!
Comrades! Alive still is
Rumor - physique - steel.
Comrades!
Whole still is
In the hearts - steel.
Brothers! The final moment!
On the border of forest
Disappeared old man...
Tightly - like fang to fang -
Mug to mug!
Voluntary tributes,
Hello, kind abuse!
Still alive is Russian
God! Who believes - stand!
Ring,
New Year's #2
S E
He - with a tender sigh,
They - cruel and tan.
The eagles don't insult
The migrated swan.
To eagles - not by invite:
Brother's he who flew inside!
Free is our trapese,
Wild is the New Year's rite.
Guest of the eagle,
Walk while you like!
We are the free pilots,
Two wings is our mark!
Under loud vaults, battles:
Look to look, steel to steel.
Then the new year's night
Beats with crystal on crystal.
Look to look, border to border:
Paired-up ringing of fates.
One in New Year morning
With eyes inarticulate.
Don't drink, if you don't want!
Near the table walk!
We are the free pilots,
Two wings is our mark!
With cathedral avalanche
New Year's collapse
On the foreheads. The swan's angst,
Don't spend the night in your eyes.
Swan's angst, to the motherland
A lingering chain.
We know your one only -
Is this not steppe of Don?
For this is the arrow -
Fly where you would like.
We are the free pilots,
x x x
Over the mountains,
Also foothills over,
Together with dawns,
With belltowers,
Horse without control -
Heading out full sail! -
Into unknown land,
Future, I lead way.
Not an eagle to call
And not swallow.
She is not yet born -
Do not christen her!
Essence of two veins.
Of the distant land.
With the saw-makers,
With the anvils, and
Forehead - don't look back,
Sigh - without a breath,
To future I speak
With the fiery sweat.
Stumps till hollow -
Is not taken yet!
Do not judge her now!
She is not born yet!
Shadow - as a guide,
Body - over a verst!
Over protoxide,
Also over rust.
Over the new skills
And faiths of times gone,
Over grandsons, Russia -
To the great-grandsons!
(What to us is pasture
Of the Kitezhs dead?)
Fall in love with her!
She is not born yet!
Sickles are removed,
Tables stand with food.
With the fates they come,
With the kingdoms too.
With the semicircle,
Sun over the sea!
Next day looks between:
Adamovo - be!
With the breath - the spirit!
By the knives - are one.
Come catch up, you fool!
From Cycle "Snowmounds"
To Ehrenburg
1
In midnight darkness
Sky threw mounds of snow.
Like from a single uterus -
Chest - and the sky - and the stones.
Over the caverns' stalactites
In emptiness of an alley
Your name Er was
Resounding hollowly.
Under the sleepy curtain
James Bruce will not tell this to you:
A leaning way into dreaming
Russia - and women - two.
Heavenly thunder is narrow!
Er - is the leopard's maw.
(Plummeting way into dreaming
Passion - and women - two...)
Er - an unbreakable fortress!
Er - ahead through the maw!
Er - in the tightened blindness
Of depths - flight in a halo!
Thus, between sky and the palate,
One of small faith, joy proclaim! -
Over the dream-vision snow mounds
Of Er that is your name.
2
Not here, where it's tied,
But there, where it's willed.
Not here, where Lazaruses
Rant in their bed,
With beasts of burden's humps
Against day's crushed stone.
There is no arm here
To you - mine.
Not here, where it's curved,
There, where it's righted,
Not here, where with wings -
With swords it's decided,
Where loud flesh on us
Finally beat! There is no gift here
To you - from me.
Not here, where it's asked,
There where answer is given...
Not here, where death is
In turmoil, and between
Is heavy - with wormhole,
And snake-jealousy.
There's no inheritance here
To you - from me.
And hard-browed life will not
Look back! Here
There's no rendezvous
There're only wires here,
The ends of belts here
Are bound all through...
There are no matins here
From me - to you.
Not yard with peelings -
Heaven's bits blessed!
Not here, where it's sought,
There, where it's released,
Where days' betrayal is
Splashed out all through.
Where there are no words:
From me - to you.
3
A strange man, for all my rivers,
Is a wide bed.
A passerby, in whom arms - like a snow
With all heat of eyelids
Guilty - after whom I come and I come,
In thunder of meeting carts.
Lover, whom it can and it cannot,
(Sigh will survive - and not!)
A strange man,
A dear man,
Nightfall-man,
For all time-man!
Unknown! - in snake oil, without candles,
I'll bake the bread for wedding.
Betrayal! My river will run in a course
Of partings, not meetings.
In meeting! - And if my speech is dark -
From shoulders a stone home!
On tearing of partings, on grumbling of meetings -
The speech of my stream.
Open space - man,
From nothing - man,
Through floor - man,
Came through - man.
4
I've magicked,
I've grumbled.
From left to right I
Accompanied.
Only as no one
Only about no one,
Only night vigil -
Above the icons:
Sorcery-storms,
Oars-fires -
Grumbling of God
Is proud above.
I've cuckooed,
I've angsted too.
That with my glory -
All rocks to you.
That with my power -
To you all rivers.
In first and third time,
Now and forever...
That with my left arm -
Weakness and help.
That as no one,
About no one...
I've sung as nightingale,
I've frozen.
Without transfer
To heaven - I promised,
(That with my flattery to you
All birds to the last one...)
In heaven who knows whose.
In heaven Persian...
In sweetness and suffering
Give through the hand, you!
Hello - in parting!
Farewell - in a rendezvous!
5
And soon is the parting,
Snow mounds yielding. Well,
Your storms' comfort, niceness
Of grumblings, farewell,
Grumpy spindles' Kingdom, zeal
Of wolves white as snow.
Snow mound heavy, noble-like,
Post-like, of white stone,
Knightly, and of comfort
To your both siblings...
And soon is the parting,
Snow mounds are yielding.
Ah, to discord, loss, dissension
Wide is open door!
Gifted luxury of orphan
Winter, farewell, snow!
Farewell, white eagles' retinue,
Trace untried, unknown,
Farewell, sin covered with snow,
On the melted snow.
Hunchbacks-humps-the little camels -
Householders, farewell!
And soon is the parting,
The snow mounds do yield.
With love, poor people are owed
A ringing day of spring.
Where there's snowstorm: cover-our-curtain,
A head leaning!
The entire day munches,
Tireless, icicles' grain.
Butchery, knackery, pieces,
Droplets, and parting.
Day - with belt, the night is skimpy:
Not to try, nor start...
And the snow mounds are yielding,
Soon we too will part...
In two hands I take - by both:
I won't be torn - well?
Beads expensive into two
Rivers from the holes.
Enchanted, defrosted is
The way, sold to the streams.
Friend! Over the steep snow mounds
Left my sorceries.
Do not stare that tears are pouring:
Water - it may be!
It is now the time of parting
x x x
Familiar! Wherefrom you come to our country?
Which wind to attack?
Familiar! I will not fall in love with you:
Your suit is black.
While the black bonfire is burning,
To beauty - spark into an eye!
Familiar! Yours is a costly fancy,
And costly is refusal, too, of mine.
From Cycle "Earthly Marks"
1
Thus, in the meager labor of days,
Thus, in difficult convulsion to her,
You will forget the friendly trochee
Of the courageous girlfriend of yours.
Her severity's bitter gift,
And the light shyness' hidden heat,
And that whose name is distance
That wireless hit.
All antiquity, except: Give and Mine,
All, except the earth's, jealousy,
All loyalty - but in a deadly war
To a Thomas who does not believe.
My tender one! Do not take into your home
This refugee, by the grayness of dads!
Be well the left-chested smithy
Of not philosophical ends!
But maybe, in twitters and counts
Having tired of femininity -
And you will recall my arm, right-less,
And a courageous sleeve.
The lips, not demanding to laugh
, The rights not following behind,
The eyes, knowing not the eyelids,
And following: light.
2
Not correcting the marvel to numbers,
Find trusting girlfriends for you! I
know that Venus is work of hands,
I'm a craftsman - and craft I know.
To full trampling of the soul
From silence solemn and high:
The divine staircase - From:
My breath - to: do not sigh!
3
(BALCONY)
Ah, from a stark overlook
Down - into ash and tar!
To salt the underweight with tears
Of earthly love - what for?
Balcony. Darkness of evil
Kisses through salty rains.
And sigh of endless hatred:
Breathe out a poem's refrain!
What: heart or Batiste rabble
Is in the arm like stone
Tight? To such lotions
There is a name: Jordan!
This battle with love,
I hear, Is wild and heartless, yes.
Even from granite brow
Soar - to breathe out in death!
4
Hands - and resale
And re-action in a round!
Only the lips,
Only not to mix up my hands!
There is no sleep from these
All these worries.
Raising my hands,
Friend, I curse my memory!
That in the poems
(In the landfill of my Highness!)
You did not wither,
You did not dry like others.
That in the chest
(In thousand-breasted brothers' grave
Of mine) - you weren't
Washed by the millenia's rains!
Midst bodies, body -
You, that were loss to me of two stars!
That he won't vanish
With a message: Not recognized.
x x x
Hello! Not arrow, not stone:
I am the most live of wives:
With two arms into your sleepless
Sleep. I am life.
Give! (On the two-sharp tongue
Take! - two-sharpness of snake!)
All of me in bare-headed
Joy, please do take!
Cling! - today on the schooner,
Cling! - on the skies! - Cling! - linen!
I am today in new
Gilded and the seventh skin!
Mine! - and of which rewards
When in the hands, at mouth - heaven:
Life is the flung-open joy
x x x
In empty temple
Trinity - with myrrh.
I fell on my crown
With grain and fire...
I go calm as I enter
Into night screams -
Your tiny brazier
I will be:
Domestic fowl:
To smoke the angst,
To chase night boredom,
Warm earthly hands!
From pitiless chest of
Gods - so I'm thrown!
Any love was given me:
A big one!
With such bonds!
With such privilege!
Half a life? All for you!
To elbow? Here is she!
For this, that you torment,
For this, that you demand,
For this, that there are
Poor earthly hands...
In vain! By amphibrach
You will not regulate!
Only open the eyes
Wider within my breast,
Not as Logos I came,
Not as eternity,
With empty-headedness
Your twittering
To the chest... Not to have power!
Without word on the word -
To love... a prostrate
x x x
Inimitably lies life:
Above a lie, above waiting,...
But by the trembling of all veins
You may recognize: Life!
(Why that in rye you lie!) - heat, wave...
Like in the rye you lie: ringing, blue...
Murmur - through woodbine - of hundred veins...
Be joyful! I was called by you!
And, friend, don't be scolding
Since our bodies' souls are spellbound -
What now: into the dream with forehead.
Otherwise - why did you sing?
In the white book of your quietness,
In the wild mud of your "yes" -
I lean the forehead quietly:
x x x
Lethe's underwater light,
Reef of a red heart.
Lancet has stopped short,
Cutting a singing throat:
Not the red heat of veins,
Not the flame of difficulties -
An undissolved pearl in
Singing throats' bitterness.
Sorrow sorrow! In it all
We carve and swim and die.
Not dissolved is the pearl
Within the voice's ray...
Pearl! Let iron wheeze,
Thousands saws and drills -
An unextruded thorn in
Trees
To my Czech friend, Anna Antonovna Teskova
1
In dead ones believing,
To be spellbound I do not try.
In ancient heather,
In silver-sliding land dry,
Let pipers with trumpets
Glory to my shade beam!
In heather-losses,
In heather-dry streams.
Ancient heather!
Growth on the naked stone!
In our orphanage's identity
Having assured and known,
Bits of the final brocade
Having lost and taken away -
In heather-ruin,
In heather-streams turned dry.
Two-minded friendships
And choking of ugliness, life.
With heat and dryness,
(For severe is the chief),
Higher, where mountain-ash
Comelier than King David is!
In heather-gray spots,
In heather-dry seas.
2
When incensed soul
Drunk on insult became,
When to fight demons
She vowed seven times,
Not with the ones, with fiery rains
Flushed into the abyss:
With earthly lowness of days,
With people's bigotries -
Trees! I come to you! To be saved
From market cry!
As heart is inspired by your
Wavings up high!
God-wrestling oak! Into war
With its root marches!
Willows - my prophetesses!
Virgin-birches!
Pine standing in torture,
Elm - wrathful Avessalom,
The bitterness of ashberry,
My lips' psalm:
To you! Into live-flowing mercury
Of leaves - crumbling although
! To fling open the arms!
The manuscripts to throw!
The swarms of green reflections...
Like ones weaving arms!
My bare-headed ones,
My trembling ones!
3
To swimmers, in a light circle
Having been beaten -
A flock of guardian nymphs - suddenly,
The mantles sweeping
A scroll is unrolled - throwing back
The foreheads and hands
In dance that with defensive blow
Will suddenly end -
A long arm put on the thigh...
Drawing out, I scream...
A silver of birches,
Living streams!
4
Friends! Brotherly multitude!
You, whose waving blows away
The trace of earthly insult.
Forest! - Elysium mine!
A drinking buddy of souls
In friendships' loud band -
Having chosen being sober, day
In quiet brotherhood I will end.
Ah, from a stomping crowd
In light sacrificial fire
Of groves! In great stillness of Moss!
In the current of firs...
The wise tiding of tree! Wood
Prophetic, over the sheer
Gnarling of curves,
Is the perfect life here:
Where there's no slavery or blight,
There, where all is its height,
There, where truth's better seen:
On the days' other side...
5
Refugees? Messengers?
Respond if you are alive!
The monks on horseback,
Having seen God in groves?
How many sandals are running?
How many buildings are flaming?
How many runners and judges
For the trees' running?
Forest! You're now a rider!
What people disease
Call: is the last
Convulsion of trees -
This - Is a teen in a
Wide dress with nectar fed.
This - at once uprooted
Is the wood!
No, another, not flakes
In a day - leafed flood
I see: spears headlong
I see: murmur of blood!
And flying as an upturned
Junk heap - who could have seen?
That is Saul after David:
With his death so tan.
6
Not with paint or with brush!
Light - his kingdom, it's gray.
Here light violates color
The red leaves - a lie.
Color, with light violated.
Light - to fight color on breast.
Is not in this secret
The essence and strength
Of autumn forest?
Over the quiet creek of days
Like curtain was torn -
And behind it's scary...
Through chausible of parting
Like seeing a son -
And suddenly words rise:
Elysium and Palestine.
A stream... a draft...
Through tremblings small part -
Light, better than death -
And - connection's cut.
------------------
The autumn grayness,
You, apotheosis of Goethe!
Much was sung here
And was unbound still more.
Thus light the gray spots:
Thus family heads - of the son
Last out of seven
The final, very last one
Into the last doors -
With rubbed-through light of hands...
(I don't trust paint!
Here Purple - is last of servants!)
Not with light already:
They shimmer with some kind of light...
Not in this or the other -
And the connection is cut.
Thus the deserts are lighting
And - I said more than I could:
Cupolas of Elysium
And Palestine's sand.
7
She woke up and stands
Who slept without dreaming -
In strict gradualness of psalm,
With rock of seeing -
The multitudes of bodies that awaken -
Hands! Hands! Hands!
Like warriors under the hail of arrows,
Ripe for torments.
Scrolls of the falling into ash
Chausibles, see-through like nets.
The lashes of the old ones, not knowing
Shame, and hands
Covering the groin... (Of virgins!)
Of teenagers - Birds!
A horsecart on the pipe of court!
Body till the loins
Having wheedled from coffin wraps -
Flight gray-bearded:
Being! - Transportation! - Legion!
Entire peoples
Of refugees! - On dearness and rage!
Remember! - Be! - See!
In the evening, on the hill,
Several trees.
8
Someone is driving - to deadly victory.
Trees have the gestures of tragedy.
Jews - the secret dance! The trees
Have the quivers of mystery.
This - is a conspiracy against century:
Weight, count, time, fractions.
This - is a torn curtain:
Trees have gestures of the coffins.
Someone's riding. Sky - entry is.
Triumphal gestures have the trees.
9
With what inspiration,
With what truths of God,
Of what you sound,
The leaves' floods?
With what frantic
Sevillian secrets -
Of what you sound,
Of what forget?
What's in your fanning?
I know - you heal
Time's insult with
Eternity's chill.
But as a young genius having
Risen - you decry
With finger of absence
The beholding's lie,
That once anew, like never,
The earth to us did seem.
That underneath the eyelids
Took place conspiracies.
That with money of wonder
You would not show off, please!
That underneath the eyelids
Took place the mysteries!
And from strength away!
And from urgency away!
Into the flood! - In prophecies
With indirect speeches.
Canopy with - leaves?
Did Seville moan?
Avalanches of leaves,
x x x
Gold of my hair
Turns to grayness quietly.
All took place, within the chest
All flowed, sang. Don't pity me!
Sang - in moaning pipe of land
On the edge blended distance.
God! Your most secretive
Design: The soul did take place.
------------------
The incombustible salt
Of my hands - will not I
Give the Phoenix's ash for tar
Of magnificence of time?
Even you have grown silver,
Satellite! To thunder and smoke,
To young graynesses of deeds -
Add the grayness of my thoughts.
Golden flower so proud, Of
your luxury don't boast:
To the young gray spots of sorrows
Laurel came - and citizen oak.
Praise to the Rich
And henceforth, that between me and you
There are miles - having forewarned!
That I count myself with the rabble,
That honest is my place in the world:
Under the wheels of all excess is
Table of uglies, cripples, backs hunched...
And from now, from the roof of belltower
I announce: I love the rich!
For their root, rotten and shaky,
Growing the wound from the crib,
For the absent-minded habit
From the pocket to pocket to grab.
For the quietest request of their lips,
Filfilled like a scream. That in paradise
They will not be allowed,
That they do not look in the eyes.
For their secrets - always with courier!
Always with messenger - their romanic bliss!
For the nights that to them are bound,
(And they violently drink and kiss!)
And for this that in counts, in boredom,
In gilt, in yawns, in cotton, I screech
Me the impudent they won't purchase -
I'm repeating: I love the rich!
And still, whether they're shaved or aren't,
Sated, drunken (I wink - and spend!)
For some - suddenly - being beaten,
For some sometime doglike glance,
Doubtful glance... not a rod
To the zeros? Do not the weights play?
And for this, that among the world's outcasts
No such orphanage is on the way.
There is such foolish tale: through the eye
Of a needle camels to pass...
For their look, that at death does wonder,
Apologizing in disease,
Like in bankruptcy... "Judged... Be glad - Yes"...
For the quiet, from lips pressed tight, to which
"I counted karats, I was the brother"
Poets
1
Poet - from afar starts a speech.
Poet - for long leads the speech.
With planets, with signs, with roundabout
Tales's potholes... between yes and nay
He even having swung from the belfry
Took out the hook... For comets' way
Is poets' way. The torn links of causation -
That's his connection! Forehead up - despair!
You know that the eclipses of the poets
Are not foretold by the calendar.
He's he, who mixes cards together,
Who does deceive all count and weight,
He's he, who asks from the school desk,
Who towers head and shoulders over Kant,
Who is just like a tree in its own beauty
Within the stone coffin of Bastille.
He is a train on which late are all comers,
Whose traces have been chilled
Always... For comets' way
Is poets' way: burning and not warming.
Tearing, not growing - to break up and tear -
Your pathway, o the mantled curved one,
Is not foretold by a calendar!
2
There are the extras, the unneeded
That do not fit within the norm.
(Not counting in your dictionaries
To them the landfill is their home).
There are the hollow, the pushed-down,
There are the mute - like dung,
Nail - to your silken skirt hem!
Dirt from under the wheels is wrung!
There are the unseen, the imaginary:
(Sign: speck of an autumn hen!)
There are the Jobs within the world
That would have envied Job - when:
We're poets - and in rhyme with scapegoats,
But from the shore thus having gone,
We argue over God with goddesses
And argue over girls with gods!
3
What should I do, blind and a stepson,
When all have fathers and have eyes,
When on anathema like embankments
Of passion! Where runny nose is the
Name of cry!
What should I do, with rib and thought
Singing! - like wire! Siberia! Sunburn!
Upon your dreams - like on the bridge!
With their weightlessness
In weights' world.
What should I do, singer and firstborn,
When gray is blackest in the world!
Where inspiration's like in thermos!
With this measurelessness in
Words and Meanings
1
You do not ever think about me!
(Tire-some!)
You think about me: the wires:
Far - lasting.
You don't complain about me, that it's pity...
Sweeter than all...
Only about one thing: the pedal:
Pain - lasting.
2
The - palm in palm:
What - for you're born?
Don't - pity: please:
Long - last - and pain.
3
Distance stretched out long with wires...
Distance and pain, is the same palm
Opening - wherefore?
Distance and pain, is the same way.
Pedals
As the distance pierces, likewise
It the distance does caress.
Longer - longer - longer - longer!
The right pedal, this one is.
It's no pity to be dying
After seeing life in bliss.
Deafer - deafer - deafer - deafer:
The left pedal, this one is.
Memory's humming Kitezh -
Right! Lethean water's
Take the left: the deafener
Will out-sing the longerer.
From the plot ones, notice,
From the cast ones having tired,
Life doesn't want to live... but often
Death does not desire to die!
It demands! From all the meatless
Keys, all broken up in row.
(With left pedal they do deafen,
With right pedal they prolong...)
It clangs! Like snake out of the falseness
Of keys, broken up all the way...
Further, further, further, further,
With the right pedal they lie!
Thus they listen..
1
Thus they listen (to the source
Listens - the mouth).
Thus they smell a flower:
Deeply - till feeling's loss!
Thus there's bottomless thirst
In the indigo air.
Thus children, in blueness of sheets,
Into the memory peer.
Thus the teenager feels
Blood - until the lotus...
Thus they fall in love:
Fall into the abyss.
2
Do not scold me for this
Dim and business-like look, friend.
Thus they gulp down the gulp:
Into depth: till feelings end.
Thus working into cloth, tailor
Sews his final attire.
Thus children whisper with a whisper,
With the cry crying.
Thus they dance... (Great
Is God - you turn around that's why!)
Thus children are quiet in silence
Crying with a cry.
Thus without bane shows itself
With a sting touched blood!
Like falling into abyss:
Dialogue of Hamlet with his Conscience
"She's on the bottom, where is mud
And seaweed... She went to sleep
In them - but there is no sleep there!"
"But I loved her,
Like forty thousand brothers
Can't love her"
"Hamlet!
She's on the bottom, where is mud:
Mud! And the final garland
Has floated on the river-side logs"
"But I loved her
Like forty thousand.."
"Less,
Still, than one lover.
She's on the bottom, where is mud"
"But I"
(bewildered)
Crevasse
With what this day will end
Neither friendship nor love will know.
With each day you answer more quietly,
With each day deeper you go.
Thus, worrying over nothing -
Only branches move of a tree -
Thus into the ice crevasse -
Into the chest, that I smashed against thee!
From the treasure-chest of likenesses
Here is prediction - by guess - for thee:
You in me like in crystal coffin
Sleep - you like in deep wound in me
Sleep - tight is the icy crevasse!
Ices are jealous of their dead ones:
Finger - armor - print - and belt...
Without return and without response.
In vain you scold Helen, widows!
Not the beautiful Helen's Troy's fire!
The blueness of ice crevasses,
On whose bottom you sleep, sire...
Sleep, dreamer! With you having met
Like with Empidocles, Aetna...
Chest will not give out its dead
And to family say, it's in vain.
x x x
To the appointed rendezvous
I'll be late. Gray-haired I will come
Having taken the spring with me.
You have appointed him high up
I will walk for years - to bitter mercury
Did not tremble Ophelia's taste!
I will walk through mountains - and deserts,
I will walk through souls - and hands.
The earth will live for long! Thicket -
Blood! And each droplet - a creek.
But always with the stream's side
In bitter grass, Ophelia's look.
That which quaffing passion, only
Filled with mud! - On the stone, with shaft!
I have loved you highly, highly,
In the sky I have myself kept.
x x x
Early still - not to be!
Early still - not to burn!
Tenderness! Cruel lash of
Meetings from other world.
However deeply you lean -
Heaven is vat with no end!
O, for a love like this
It's early - without wounds!
Life lives with jealousy!
Into the earth the blood
Pours. The widow will give
Her right - for a sword?
Life lives with jealousy!
Blessed are the blows to hearts!
Her right for a sickle
Will give away the grass.
Secret thirst of the grass...
Every sprout: "break me down"...
Given away to the rag,
Still all the wounds are - mine!
And till a common seam -
I pour - you will not place -
It is still early for ice
Moon - to Sleepwalker
Those who wound up - will remain.
Further - up.
In the hour of final forgetfulness
Don't wake up.
He has no friends who is a genius
And walks at night.
In the hour of final vision
Don't gain sight.
I'm your eyes. The owl's roof
Of eyes, dear.
I will call you by the name -
Do not hear.
I'm your soul: Urania:
To gods - door.
Do not check me in the final
Rails
In a sometime relining of note lines
Rails, their blueness perilous to eye,
Are luxuriating on the linens
As do those that on the bed sheets lie!
Pushkin's: How many, what is chasing them,
To where! (It fled - no more they sing!)
Here they all are evermore departing,
Here they're sobering and lingering.
Here they stay. Pain like a note
Towering... Above love all
Towering... Like petrified Lot’s wife
Into cemetery stones stiffed the poles...
O the hour, when sheets have been spread out
By despair like matchmakers - Yours! And
Sappho that has lost her voice completely
Like the poorest seamstress cries in pain.
Cry of placability! Cry of a swamp
Heron, cry of waterweed... I deem
Linens of a railroad being cut,
Like by scissors, by a loud scream.
O the red unnecessary spot,
Flow apart as an unneeded dawn!
The young maidens, one after the next,
Letter
They don't wait for letters,
For a letter they wait.
A shred of rag
Around a braid
Of glue. Within - a word.
And happiness. And this - is all.
Thus they don't wait for joy,
Thus they wait for the end:
A soldier's salute
And into the chest - lead
Three pieces. It's red in the eye.
And this is it. And only.
No happiness - she's old!
Wind blew - color!
The black muzzles
And the yard's square.
(The letter's square:
Of ink and spells!)
No one is too old
For sleep of death!
The letter's square.
x x x
You that loved me with the falseness
Of the truth - and truth of lie,
Abroad! There is nowhere further!
You that in me placed your love!
You, that loved me for much longer
Than the time. - The right hand's stroke!
You don't love me any longer
Is the truth in six small words.
x x x
The demon in me
Is not dead but lives!
In self like in a jail
In body like in a bilge.
The world - is walls,
The exit - the axe.
("The world is a stage,"
The actor speaks).
He did not deceive,
The lump-legged ogre.
In body - like in glory.
In body - like in a toga.
Many a year!
Rejoice in your life!
(Only the poets are
In a bone - like in a lie!)
We won't party,
Singing brothers,
In body like in a cotton
Gown of a father.
We're worth the best.
In heat we wilt.
In body - like in a stall.
In self - like in a pot.
Mortal magnificence
We do not hold.
In body - like in a morass,
In body - like in a vault,
In body - like in extreme
Exile. - Wilt!
In body - like in a secret,
In temples - like in a grip
x x x
Into the gray spot - temple,
Into the rut - soldier.
Sky - with sea we are painting you.
Like on every syllable -
That on secret peer
I turn around,
I make myself cute.
In the shootout - scythe,
In the Christ dance - switch,
Sea - I run into you with the sky.
Like on every poem -
On a secret screech
I am stopping,
Putting my guard up high.
In each line: You stand! In each spot
There may treasure be.
Eye! With light in you I unfold myself,
I come apart. With angst
On guitar harmony
I rebuild myself,
I cover myself.
Marriage - in dawn
Not in feather - of swan!
Marriages are altogether different!
Like on hyphen sign
That on secret sign
Brows are starting -
You suspect me yet?
Not in drunken tea
Of glory - strong's my soul.
And my exchequer is not small!
Under your finger
Like bread of the Lord
We are broken up,
x x x
Brother in the songtime woe -
I am envying you.
Let it be fulfilled this way -
In separate room to die! -
How many years? Century?
Is the dream of every day.
------------------
And not pity: little lived,
And no anguish: little gave.
He who lived in our days, lived
A lot: he who gave a song - all gave.
To live (only not newer
Than death!) here across the veins.
And for something this exists - Hooks upon the ceiling.
Conversation with a Genius
With blocks - on forehead
Resides the laurel.
"I cannot sing"
"You will" - "Vanished, fell
(Translate into
Oatmeal!)
Sound from the chest -
Just like milk.
Empty and dry.
In full spring -
Feeling's a bitch."
"An old song!
Throw, don't confuse!"
"Better I go -
Pound a stone"
"And to sing now"
"What am I, bullflinch
In the day to sing?"
"Do not be able to,
Bird, but sing!
To spite the foe!"
"That just lines, two
I cannot parse?"
"Who ever could?!"
"Torture!" - "Endure!"
"Meadow mown down -
Gullet!" - "Wheeze:
That too is sound!"
"Business of lions
Not of wives." - "Kids:
Broken apart -
Orpheus did sing!"
"Thus in a coffin?"
"A board underneath."
"I cannot sing"
To Mayakovsky
1
That the world would not die
Without desperate men,
Be, baby Vladimir, ruler
Of world from end to end.
2
Literary - not in it is
Truth, but here - spill blood!
It comes out every seven days.
Departed - once in a hundred
Years it comes. Killed is the first
Soldier. Which, capital,
Missives to you, which
Article to you still?
Gold - to a Milukovite*:
This is to us, dear.
"Bass, they say, and walks in vests.
Mayakovsky, Vladimir"...
Hey, blood-your-blood!
How to make peace with the news,
When the blood of her first
Soldier - on second page
(Of the news).
* Milukov was a leader in the parliamentary revolution of early 1917, derided by Communists for his bourgeois beliefs.
3
"In the coffin, in the usual dark suit,
in steady, rough shoes, shod with
iron, lies the greatest poet of the
Revolution." - One-day Newspaper, April 24 1920.
In the boots that had been shod with iron
In the boots in which he took the mountain -
Without a detour or redirection
Having reached the mountain crossing -
Over a run of twenty years
Until they were shining and were spent.
Mountain of the proletarian Sinai,
On whose top he as the prophet stands,
That the resident office would not meddle
In the boots - a two-yard living square -
In the boots, in which, wearing a frown,
He carried the mountain - took - sang - swore -
In the boots before, without refusal
By the untilled fields of October,
In the boots - almost like water-climber:
Infantryman, speaking clearer:
In the boots in which he took a great hike,
On the Donbass, I do fear, nails.
Mountain of the grief of own people,
Hundred fifty million (State Publications)...
In which kind, then,
Of one's own, and upon which year:
"Nothing of one's own in the factory!"
Burning mountain of all the peoples - here.
Thus in these - about his Rolls-
Royces Talk has not gone silent at this time -
To dead pioneers he shouted: Take formation!
In the boots - witnesses to the crime.
4
The lovers' boat broke against life.
And a bet one would not place
Upon a leader such as this.
Comrade, comrade, this your boat
From what dictionary is?
Still within the lovers' boat
Thrown one's head back - a scandal!
Razin - what here does not suit you?
Better mastered life in all.
This novelty - medicine
Bursting, what is your faucet?
Fellow, not like proletarian
You behave, what's with you yet?
It was worth in gods and mother
Us, that - not the dawn, the blood!
The white undercoat of class
To turn over toward the end.
Like a cadet, at the Toska
From despair having shot!
Fellow! Not like Mayakovky
You're behaving, like a shah.
With a cap upon your brow
And - farewell, my dear one!
You ended as great-grand-father
Having lived as great-grand-son.
And again, like on the checkup
We will go - shame'll eat you, son:
You the Soviet-Russian Werther,
Gesture noble-Russian.
Earlier - to police station,
Now... My enemy, dear one!
There are no new lover's boats
Underneath the shining moon.
5
Like only by enemies,
In the very soul - a shot.
This today, the final temple
Is destroyed by foe of God.
Having not yet oriented,
Went to sleep, reaching the spot.
Heart began now beating, beating,
Stop, within the trace of shot.
(An abroad, within the meeting:
"Incident! What a land mine!
This means - there is a heart also?
And with our own, the same one?"
A shot - in the very spot now,
Like into the aim of market.
(Often - the left lobe
Having shaved - with wife in bed. )
Hotshot! You did not miss target!
And this for the woman - what!
And Helen a lousy creature
You will call, having thought.
By but one thing, but completely,
The Left poet surprised us so:
Only to the right and knowing
How to shoot, and left did go.
In the right - would that the lancet
Shine - and healthy is your chef.
Well, the self-same Central Singer:
A shot in the door on left!
6
The Soviet grandee,
Under full Sinod...
"Hello, Sergei!"
"Hello, Volodya!"
"Got tired?" "Just little"
"By common?" "My own yet."
"Did it shoot?" "Habitually."
"Did it burn?" "Excellent."
"Thus maybe it lived?"
"Pass in which type, here." "
Not so good, Sergei!"
"Not so good, Vladimir!
And do you remember,
How in your pop
Bass you did curse me?"
"Well, now, stop...
Thus here a boat
Is this lovers' boat!
Not from a skirt?"
"It's worse from vodka -
A bloated face.
From that time on platoon here?
Not so good, Sergei."
"Not so good, Vladimir.
And maybe - not razor -
Is worked out cleanly.
Thus beaten is card
Completely?" "It trickles."
"Apply now the plaintain"
"It's good and collodium.
Let's apply it, Sergei?"
"Let's apply, Volodya."
And what is in Russia -
The mother? "Where's it?"
"In USSR
What is new?" "They build
The parents give birth,
The harmful ones sharpen,
The publishers drive and
The writers are writing.
The new bridge is laid
And washed out with half-water.
It's all the same, Sergei!"
"It's the same, Vladimir
And the singing flock?
"People, know, winding
Our ground laurels
Like rod of the dead ones.
The old Rost
With tomorrow's lacquer.
You will not do with
Just one Pasternak here.
Let's apply the arms
To that there lack of water?
Let's apply them, Sergei? "
"Let's apply, Vladimir!
Still bows to you now... "
And what's the kind, our
Lsan Alexandrovich?"
"There -angel!" "Fyodor
Kuzmich?" "On the canal:
By the red cheeks
He went." "Nikolai Gumilev?"
"On the East
(On the complete dray,
In matting bloody...)
"Still the same, Sergei"
"Still the same, Volodya.
And still this the same,
Volodya dear friend -
Let's apply the hands
Though there are no hands
Volodya." "Though there is none,
My dear brother Sergei,
Underneath this kingdom
Let's place a grenade!
And on the sunset
By us bothered
Let's place it, Sergei!"
"Let's place it, Vladimir!"
7
He destroyed many temples,
And this - more precious than all.
Accept, Lord, your deceased enemy's soul.
Poems to Pushkin
1
Scourge of gendarmes, god of students,
Sweetness of wives, husbands' bile
Pushkin - in a monument's role?
In a stone guest's role?
Bare-toothed, with daring stare,
Pushkin - in role of commander?
Critic - whining, whiner - speaking:
"Where is Pushkin's (weeping)
Sense of measure?" Feeling - having
Forgotten the sea beating
On the granite? Salty one,
Pushkin - in role of lexicon?
His two legs having stretched out
To warm, and table upon
Having jumped before the tyrant,
The self-ruling African -
Ruin of our great-grandfathers -
Pushkin - in role of governor?
Black face can't be painted over
Can't correct it into white!
Not bad is the Russian classic,
Having once African sky
Called his own, cursed the Nieva's!
Pushkin - in role of Russia-lover?
O you, all the bearded augurs!
Would have given to you the ball
He who rhymed "tsar's edit"
With "an idiot," and for it all
"Europe's messenger" - with...
Pushkin - in role of gravedigger?
To the jubilee of Pushkin
We will at this time give word:
Ruddier than all and tanner
Till this time in all the world,
Livelier than all and living!
Pushkin - in role of mausoleum?
To the cabins of Pushkin
You flock that are trash - yourselves!
Like from shower! Like from cannon -
At the Pushkin's nightingales -
Words, the falcons, flying ones!
Pushkin - in role of a gun!
From the scream the ears are popping:
"To the front before Pushkin!"
Where did they leave the red of lips,
Where did they leave the Pushkin's
Mutiny? Lips' cursed pleasure?
Pushkin - in the Pushkin's measure!
Having placed tomes in the bookcase -
You will bring laughter to him,
Having mixed your refugeeness
With his white insanity!
White-bloodedness of brain, blueness
Of morgue - with Negro's leer, a throat
To the seeming...
Would then he, the Copper Horseman,
On all hooves behind come leap.
Poor Vanya was a coward,
But he - is not cowardly.
He, looking in every corner -
In the very Tatyana's role?
What are you doing, you crows,
This - bluer than the olives -
The most free, the most far-out
Forehead - branding for centuries
With the doubleness so low
Of the middle and the gold?
"Pushkin - toga, Pushkin - prayer,
Pushkin - measure, Pushkin - frame..."
Pushkin, Pushkin, Pushkin - noble
Name is like a scolding scream
Of the parrots - on the square.
Pushkin? We're very full of fear!
2
PETER AND PUSHKIN
Not with fleet, not with sweat, not with back
In patches, not with Swede at the feet,
Not with growth - from any row,
Not - to all there is time - with the drift,
Not with lot, not with boat, not with German
Through smoke of the stoves beer,
And not even with Peter-wonder
His own (his own deed of Peter!)
And would there be little of big one
(God gave, not a burden is man!)
When he could not bear Hannibal-Arab
Onto the white Russian land.
This African into learning
Having taken, the noses of Russians
Having wiped and insisted - there's light
In Russia from a Negro's grandson!
The turning one he would not have In the string!
"Onto freedom? Instead!
You are such a chamber
officer As I'm king of masquerade!"
Having learned, not with foam, not with pumice
Of Africa - literary tsar
Would've decided: "From now of your African
Passions I am a censor."
And having hit him on curly
Neck (cut - not cut!)
"Go, son, Onto a short little visit
Into the wilds African!
Sail - and be sad of nothing!
There's someone into sails to blow!
If you'll get bored - come back to me,
If not - forget even the door!
Order: having abandoned
Icy fogs - inch, an inch behind
To trace the hot countries
And with a verse to describe."
And past the retinue placed there,
Left behind - at the warehouse, straight,
A giant, having left the poet,
Ran - on or over the land?
The tan-faced one not on Russian
Snow - the snow's Ismael!
He, now, with the archives
The foreign bird did not kill!
He, not on the fast Slavic blood,
He is a mestizo also!
You, now, on the homeland archives
Of him simply would not sour!
He would have made peace with you!
For the unforced bow
Requested by Nicholas,
By Peter would be granted so!
The gendarmes' search he would not cover
With "homeland of feelings"!
He would for you - a demonic
Glance! - not freeze the lips.
He would not crumple Poltavan
Ends, would not blunt the pen.
For what as unworthy descendant -
As a creep - Peter's agaric - was sent
Into Romanian area
And with it - by him was granted -
He killed his shy son, having shyness
Of man so much hated.
"This chaff - I? Here
Now grow, having been born!"
His true son was the Negro,
As his true great-grandson
You'll remain. The pact of equals.
And having not asked for alms here
The great-grandson of giant's godson
Peter's spirit made its heir.
And step, and the lightest of the light
Glances, to which it's light now...
The final - posthumous - immortal
Peter's gift to Russia.
3
(MACHINE)
All his science is -
Might. It's light - and I look:
The hand of Pushkin
I press, do not lick.
Friend to great-grandfather:
In the same old shop!
Like with one's own hand
Each and every blot.
Under piles - to a free one?
To me, in cauldron of wonders
Weight of open bracket
As it does explore,
Minding written notes -
Meaning, than all more brief.
There's not greater search
Than relationship!
It was sung - is sung
And now - it is so.
We know how it's "given"!
Over you we know,
"Trifle" - how it sweated!
Out of you, O stroke,
How I wanted forest -
Ball - and sleigh - I know...
And how - sleep I wanted!
How above love's flower -
I know, how it creaked
With teeth of Negro!
Feathers on alert -
I know how he fixed!
Fingers have not dried yet
From his ink!
And midst tallow candles,
Midst card games, I know
How it shook! From naked
Shoulders, from mirrors,
From the glasses beaten
On the floor -
How it ran on naked
Table I know!
Battle, without evil:
Of self with self, I knew!
Do not beat with Pushkin!
With him I'm beating you!
4
Conquest
Of inertness Russian -
Genius of Pushkin?
Pushkin's muscle
On the fate's carcass
Of the sperm whale -
Muscle of flight,
Running,
Struggle.
With morning languor
Vigorously having battled!
Of a long walk,
Of running equal -
Muscle. A muscle
Of flights the steppe over,
Of boat that bears
Through whirlwind to the shore.
Not burdened
With blood Russian -
O, not a camel's
Or ox's vein
(From under the belt
He did work hard!) -
Mine is the muscle
Of horse's heart.
Prettier than ever -
More ballast!
Muscle of acrobat
And gymnast,
That on the rope
Of one's own tendons
From casemate -
Flew as a falcon!
Pushkin - from guiding
Of monarch's hands
Beating, like beats
To the death
(Might - arrived,
Strength did grow)
With muscle of shaft
Muscle of oar.
Someone, having carried
On cart: "Of athlete
Musculature is this,
Not of poet!"
That was the strength
Of an angel:
Wing's muscle
Unbreakable.
(POET AND TSAR)
1(5)
With other-sided
Tsar's hall. -
And is this one not
Unbowed, of marble?
In ornaments' gold
So grandly framed. -
A pitiful gendarme
Of Pushkin's fame.
He ran down the author,
Cut text writ by hand.
A brutal butcher
Of Polish land.
Look more intensely!
And do remember:
Tsar Nicholas the First
Is the first-born's Murderer.
2(6)
No, the drum beat before the dark brigade
When the chief we did inter:
The teeth of the tsar over the dead singer
Beat out the drill of honor.
Such is the honor, that for closest friends
There's no space. At the head, feet - arms,
To the sides - on the right, on the left -
Are chests and mugs of gendarmes.
Is this not a wonder - in quietest box
A supervised boy now to be?
Like something, like something, like something it is
His honor, honored - overly!
Look, now, the country, how in spite of the talk
Monarch dotes over the poet!
Honorably - honorably - honorably - arch-
Honorably - honorably - to hell yet!
Whom then this way - like a thief, shot to death
They bore over the land?
A traitor? No. Through the gatekeeper's yard -
The smartest of Russian men.
3(7)
The people's power, having overthrown the throne,
Not celebrated - friction:
To executioners not to allow burial
Of victims, the burial of Pushkin
To censors. In the unassigned time,
In prevention of strife.
Not to bear under the (great!) noise
Over the route of the thief -
Not to doom to the final dark,
The complete deaf-and-dumbness
Of the body, cropped as such
With scissors - in the poems.
Country
With the flashlight turn the world
Under moon into a ball!
On the map or in the space there's
No such country, not at all.
Drank like from a saucer,
And the bottom shines.
Can one come back home
To a house that's gone?
In the newer country
Once again be born
! To the back of horse
That threw you, return
Now at last! The bones
Are whole - so well?
To such guests the baker
Sliced bread will not sell,
To such guests the carpenter
Will not sell the coffin!
Such - with the uncounted
Miles, kingdoms of heaven,
Such, upon whose coins
My youth came to be -
There's no such a Russia -
Ode to Walking
1
In the century of giant,
Fateful speeds -
Glory to sturdy brotherhood
Of walkers' feet!
On all crags, on all terrains,
Straight ahead, without roads,
Mightily beating down
The nature's threshold,
Daringly raped by the times.
(Midst dynamos and turbines
To live only as cripples!) ...
But to you avenging
Over the advertisement stamps
On the chest reared and fed.
No, the footless tribe,
Reach the length with your feet!
Glory to the thick soles,
To the boots with the studs,
To walkers, speed-runners -
To in boots shod gods!
If there's ode in the world
To god of peaks and power -
It's the look of the walker
At the broken motor.
Grin in all fifteen inches,
Grin wider than the face :
It's the look of the walker
On the tire as it breaks.
Look now at the torso
Shattered by arrogance!
Alcoholics of distance,
Parasites of wide space -
That through dusty cloud
Of arm-dancing mobs
Break apart. An occurrence?
Of one's foolishness post.
2
Here's he, sword of the dreamers,
Lash of loads on the spine!
Casting beauty, like rapist,
From its feet: to lie down
! He won't answer and lie down -
Like a bed - like a grave -
But he won't show the face
And the soul won't give Back...
He'll give you back nothing
Not July, not April -
O the eyeless, bespectacled,
Lacquered null!
Creator of trouble
Between South and North!
(Records of speed:
Emptiness) your Fords.
Your Rollses and Royces -
That old snake, flattery!
Son! Be fearful of God,
To trudge feet he told thee.
Precious dolls from Oper
And Madeleine, to you
In exchanged for the lacquered
Boat - quiet shoes
Of the dead. O,
The lie so cold
Of the mannikin blocks,
The unstepped-upon soles!
Glory to God in heaven -
God of strength, God of tsars -
For granite and crushed stone,
For the quartz and the spar,
Under silicon hoof
Change given in cash...
And for this that he made me
Walking marvel in flesh.
3
Growing cozy in sponging,
From a tire hurries grandson.
Walkers! Hold to your feet
Like great-grandfathers - arms.
Where there's boundary for rubber -
There for legs there is space.
Room for breath in the bosom
When there's not enough gas!
Like a flood Prague is thirsty,
Thus thirsts thrill of expense.
Do not dare teach the children
Anything but the steps!
By the streams, by the seashores,
Ahead - no! Ahead - stop!
That with feet the savannas
You knew, with knees the Alps.
For the openings of schools,
Friends, I'll kick my two bones
That from the first step
To the last - my grandson
Went! Muscle, putting
Hades to shame! My offshoot!
That in kingdom of mollusks -
Elderberry
Elderberry fills the whole garden!
Elderberry is green, green,
Greener, than mold on the vat!
Greener, than summer at the start!
Elderberry - till the end of days!
Elderberry greener than my eyes!
And after - through the night - with the fire
Of Rostov! - it is red in the eyes
From the trill of bubbly elderberry.
Redder than measles on one's own body
In all your times, azure,
Measles that scatters and pours
Of elderberry - till winter, till winter!
That in small berry sweeter
Than poison, what are dissolved paints!
Of red cotton, sealing wax and Hades
Mix, a shimmer of corral beads,
And a taste of baked blood.
Elderberry has been killed, has been killed!
Elderberry the whole hall filled
With blood of young and pure,
With blood of branches of fire -
With the blood most merry -
With blood of heart of you and me...
And later - grain's waterfall will be,
And later - black is elderberry:
With plum something, sticky something.
Over the gate, moaning with violin,
Near the house, which is empty,
Is lonely bush of elderberry.
Elderberry, without mind, without mind,
Of your beads, elderberry, am I!
Steppe - to Mongol, Caucasus - to Georgian will go,
To me - elderberry bush under window
Give. Instead of Arts Palace, only
Give this bush of elderberry.
Newcomers in my country -
From the berry - elderberry,
My ruddy childhood thirst,
From the tree and from the word
: Elderberry (till this day - at nights...),
Poison - sucked in by the eyes...
Elderberry is red, is red!
Elderberry - took the whole land
In its paws. In power, my childhood all.
Something like passion criminal,
Elderberry, between you and me
Century's disease - elderberry
x x x
Longing for homeland! Long
ago Exposed torment! To me
It is completely all the same
Where completely lonely to be,
By which stones on the road home
With the bazaar knapsack to drag
Home, not knowing, that it's mine,
Like hospital or a barrack.
It's same to me, among which faces
Like an imprisoned lion to bristle,
And from among which people's midst
To be forced out - without fail -
Into oneself, into individual feelings.
As polar bear without ice floe
Where not to live - it's the same to me
(And I don't dare) - where to go low.
I won't be tempted by the milky
Call of the tongue of my homeland.
It is the same to me on which
People me would misunderstand.
(To reader of newspaper tons,
To gulper, milker of rumors.) He
Is of the twentieth century,
And I - of any century!
Grown petrified just like a log
Remaining only of an alley,
They're all the same, it's all the same,
And maybe most the same - to me -
Dearer than everything that was.
All marks from me, all signs that were,
All dates - brushed off as if by hand:
Soul, that had once been born - somewhere.
Thus my land did not keep me there,
That the detective most keen
Along the soul, across it all!
The birthmark has not sought or seen!
Alien is home, temple - empty,
And all's the same and one to me.
But if along the road a bush
Rises, especially - ashberry...
x x x
The time did not think of a poet,
And I don't care to think of him.
God be with him, with noise and thunder,
He did not come within my time!
If time has not time for ancestors,
I've no time for grandsons as well.
My time's my bane, my time's my damage,
My time's my foe, my time is hell.
x x x
They cut
Ashberry
Keen.
Ashberry -
Is bitter
Fortune.
Ashberry -
With gray-haired
Descents...
Ashbery!
Fortune
To Fathers
1
In the world bellowing:
Glory to the coming!
What whispers in me:
Glory to the departing!
To you, passing,
That won't counted be,
Not bearing children,
Preceding me.
With brush, with key
They argued, with deed
Written - pure
Was their life and their honor.
White - more fair than
Treasures of snow ! -
Hair - of your
Conscience - a novel.
2
Generation with lilac
And with Easter in Kremlin,
My hello to generation -
In the earth to the knee,
And bald spots - in the stars!
Than the reed louder,
To you, speaking: "so-ul"
Will tremble the air.
Only having saved the soul
As family inheritance
Without brothers or equals
Among older contemporaries,
Arms of faith and of friendship,
Like Caucasian - an ewer
Full of grape! - to the foe
Stretching out - them two!
Not with Siren - with lilac
Locked in cave with a key,
Generation - with soaring!
With gravity
Off the ground, over the ground,
From the grain and the worm!
Generation - without soil,
But with such - to bottom,
Such an abyss.
That from sunken eyes
Looks like pleasant virgin
As though alive.
Generation, where he looked
Best who suffered the most!
Continuation of mirrors.
Generation! I'm yours!
Yours - in physique and essence,
And respect for the mind,
And contempt for the flesh's
Temporary attire!
You - to the child doomed
To be a poet,
Besides money having
Persuaded to honor
All gods - all times - all tribes
Except the god Baal!
My immortal bow to
Generation that fell!
To you, that in times unknown
Were able to - live,
To you, that among noisy ball
Were able to - love!
Having turned to the stars
Until the finale -
Departing race,
x x x
Not a warrior of two camps, but - if occasional guest -
Like a bone in throat - guest, like a nail in sole - guest.
I was given a head - on it they knocked with two hammers:
For some - profit and for others - meanness.
You from this head - to creator's wonder
My proletarian patience add -
You from this head - what did you demand? - lechery!
Wondering at the insistent answer: cut off the head.
You from this head, leveled - like rows
Of mountains, divine draft writ in heights,
You from this head - what did you demand? - Row.
Wondering at the answer (speechless): cut off the feet!
You from this head, tuned - like a lyre:
On the highest kind: lyrical... - No, stand!
Two builders: Homebuilder and Dnieperbuilder - for choosing!
Wondering at the insane answer: Lyres - build. And
From this head, from the forehead of gray granite,
You demanded: love us! Hate them all!
Is it not the same for her, from which side it's beaten,
To be muffled from which profile of the soul?
There are times, there are times, when the heads are not needed.
But to reduce the word to the beets used for feed -
More honest with Orpheus' head - serenades!
Herodias with John the Baptist's head!
You're a tsar: live alone... (But tsars have concubines'
Minute). God is one. He - in empty skies.
Not a warrior of two camps: judge - prophet - hostage -
Of two - for freedom fights! Spirit - for freedom fights.
Readers of Newspapers
The underground snake crawls,
Crawls, carries people.
And each - with his own
Newspaper (with his own
Eczema!) Newspaper
Bone eater, chewing tick.
Readers of newspapers,
Chewers of mastics.
Who's the reader? Old man? Athlete?
Soldier? Not features, not years,
Not faces. Skeleton - since no
Face: sheet of newspaper!
Which - entire Paris
From navel to forehead wears!
Enough, girl! You'll give birth to -
Reader of newspaper.
Rock - "lives with sister" -
ing - "his father he killed!" -
Rocking - of vanity
Pumped themselves full.
What do such men care
If it is dusk or dawn?
Swallowers of voids,
Newspaper-reading ones!
Read newspapers: slander,
Read newspapers: waste.
A column - calumny,
A paragraph - disgust...
With what on Terrible court
In the light you'll appear!
Seizers of minutes, you
Readers of newspapers!
He went! Vanished! Old is
The mother's fear!
Got lost! Guttenberg's press is scarier
Than Schwartz's dust.
Better on churchyard
Than in hospital of pus
To cast scratchers of scabs,
Readers of newspapers!
Who is it that rots our sons
In their prime of years?
Mixers of blood, they are,
Writers of newspapers!
Here, friends, - and where
Stronger than in these lines!
What do I think, when
With script in my palms
I stand before the face -
There is no emptier space!
That means - facelessness
Of editor of news -
Poems to an Orphan
Baby walked along the road
Shivering and turning blue
An old woman walked that road
She took pity on the orphan...
1
Icy tiara of mountains -
Is a frame to transitory sight.
A parting of ivy today
I traced on the castle's granite.
I have chased today on all roads
Towering figures of pines.
I have taken a tulip today
Like a child to the chin.
2
With surrounding of mountains I hug you,
With the granite crown of rocks.
(That you breathe easier and sleep tighter
I am busying you with talk.)
With the sides of a feudal castle,
With the ivy hands of down -
You know - in four hundred streams and rivers
Is the ivy, hugging the stone?
But I'm not woodbine - and not ivy!
Even you, dearer than my hand,
Are not flattened - and freely let out
Onto every side of my mind!
Round the flower-bed, round the well too,
Where to gray-haired ones stone will come,
With the round pledge of an orphan -
With the loneliness my round!
(Thus not one silver braid did weave
Into my light-brown braids!)
And with river, into two parting -
Island to create - and embrace.
With entire Savoy and Piedmont
And - cracking the ridge of blue -
I embrace you with blue horizon,
With two arms I'm embracing you.
3
(CAVE)
If I could - I would take you
Into the womb of a cave:
Into the cave of a dragon,
Into the panther's grove.
Into the panther's - paws -
If I could - I would take, so.
To bosom of nature, to bed of nature.
If I could - my own skin of panther
I'd take off... I would give in the grove - to study!
In bushy, in firry, in streamy, in ivy -
Where in darkness, in dusk, and in dreaming
Branches weave for eternal weddings!
Where in granite, in milk and in bast
For centuries intertwine arms -
Like branches - and rivers...
Into cave without light, without trace into thicket.
In leaves, in ivy, in ivy - like in coat...
Not white light, not black bread: in dew
In leaves, in leaves - like in relationship too...
That did not knock on the door,
That henceforth did not happen,
That did not shout in window,
That for century didn't end!
But not enough - cave,
And not enough - grove!
If I could - I would take you
Into the womb of a cave.
If I could -
I would take.
4
On the ice floe -
Loved one,
On the mine -
Loved one,
On the ice floe, in Guyana, in Gehennah - loved one.
In the scab - desired one,
From churchyard - desired one:
Be a desired guest! Only teeth and bone - desired one!
With the under-knees angst
Till ruined darkness
With the last seizure of smoke - pitied one.
And there's no such hole, and there's no such abyss:
Loved one! Wished one! Pitied one! Struck by illness!
5
With rapid speech - with stream of water
Beating: - Loved one! Sick one! Dear!
With recitation - lingering blues:
Weak! Half-alive! Paper! See-through!
With lengthwise cut from stomach to pharynx:
Loved one! Wished one! Pitied one! Struck by illness!
6
Finally I've encountered
One that I do need:
Somebody possesses
Deadly need of me.
What to eye is rainbow,
Topsoil to the grain,
To man - is being needed
By another man.
I need more than rainbow, More
than rain or hand,
Need of my assistance
By another man.
This - wider than Ladoga
Than mountain more true -
Is need of my hand
By another's wound.
And for this that ulcerous
Palm you brought to me -
This my hand - immediately
In fire after thee!
<7>
In thoughts of another, otherwise,
Like a treasure chest not found,
Step by step, poppy by poppy -
Garden's I cut off the head.
Thus, sometime in a dry summer,
On the very edge of field,
Death my light-haired head will sever
x x x
"It's time! I'm old for this fire!"
"Older than me is love-desire!"
"All fifty years has this hill!"
"Love's older than that hill still:
Old like a snake, old like a plant,
Older than ambers of Lebanon,
Older than all the ghostly boats,
Older than seas, older than stones...
But agony that's in the heart -
Older than love, older than love.
x x x
"I dressed the table for the six"
I still convey the word and still
The first one verse I do repeat:
"I dressed the table for the six"...
But seventh one you did forget.
It is not merry for us six.
On faces are the streams of rain...
How could you over such a table
Forget the seventh - seventh one...
It is not merry for the guests,
Idle is pitcher of crystal,
Sad are they all, sad are you too,
But saddest is the one uncalled.
It is not merry and not light.
Ah! You don't drink and do not eat.
How could you have forgotten this?
How could you have erred in the count?
How could you, dared, not understand,
That six (two brothers, the third -
You, with wife, father and mother) there
Are seven - that I'm in this world?
You dressed the table for the six,
But with six the world did not die.
More than the scarecrow midst the live
I want to be a ghost - with (mine),
Yours... Shy just like a thief,
O - never touching but a soul! -
Behind the silverware unmade
I sit as seventh one, uncalled.
At once! I overthrew the glass!
An all that thirsted to be poured -
All salt from eyes, all blood from wounds -
From tablecloth - on the floorboards.
And - there's no coffin! No - parting!
Broken is spell, wakes up the home.
Like death - onto the wedding feast,
I'm - life, that to dinner have come.
And I still scold, for nobody -
Not brother, husband, son or friend: "
You, dressed the table for six souls,
Did not seat me upon the end."