A moongate in my wall: собрание стихотворений

1957

599. Мария Визи. «Вот бредем пустым суходолом…»

We roam a waterless valley — but are we asleep or awake? The wind stirs the treetops above us with its ragged hem in its wake. Here once a stream was running, but its source has long been dry. Only the sting of the half-moon and desert's fathomless sigh. From grandfathers' fairytales — there once was a source, we know. But we can't recall, half-dreaming, when? and where did it flow? We are lost. We are searching for landmarks. Our hearts in their last despair are poorer than starving beggars that stand in the city square.

5 Dec. 1967

600. Николай Гумилев(1886–1921). «У меня не живут цветы…» [269]

Flowers never live in my house, but a minute they soothe the eye, in a couple of days they die; flowers never live in my house. Birds either don't live here long, only ruff their feathers and frown, and by morning — a ball of down… Even birds do not live here long. Only volumes in eight long rows, silent volumes of many pages, guard the languorous thought of ages, like teeth, in eight long rows. The man who sold them to me, I recall, was hunch-backed and poor… …By the graveyard he kept his store, did the man who sold them to me.

269

From the collection Жемчуга (1910; 1918).

[1930s]

601. Николай Гумилев(1886–1921). Свиданье [270]

Tonight you will be coming soon, and I will understand why all alone beneath the moon it feels so strange to stand. Pale, you will check your step, and throw away your cape and hood, does not the full moon likewise flow above the somber wood? And by the magic of her ways and by yourself spell-bound, I will be happy — with my days, the dark and stillness round. So in the woods a beast which smells that spring is coming soon the rustling of the hours tells and goes to watch the moon. And softly to the glen he creeps to wake the dreams of night, and with the moon's own movement keeps his step, that's ever light. Like he, I will be speechless too, will look and lose my strength, and guard the solem n seal of you, o, Night, throughout your length! There will be m any shining moons within myself and near, and pallid shores of ancient dunes, alluring, will appear. And from the darkness which unfurls the ocean green that roars will bring me flowers, corals, pearls the gifts of distant shores. And there will be a thousand sighs of creatures dead and far, and somber sleep of silent eyes, and wine from every star. Then you will go, and I will stay to hear the moon's last tune, and see the dawning of the sky above the pallid dune.

270

From the collection Жемчуга (1910; 1918).

[1930s]

602. Николай Гумилев(1886–1921). Покорность

Only the tired are worthy of praying to God, only by lovers the meadows of spring may be trod! Soft is the sorrow on earth and the stars in the sky, softly resounded a «yes» — in the darkness to die. This is submissiveness! Come and bend over me now, pale maid, wearing the black mourning-veil on your brow! Sad is my land, in the wilds of the marshes it lies, no land could ever be fairer for sorrowful eyes. Look at the brownish buds and the damp-grown glen, they are what makes me renounce the pleasures of men. Am I in love? Or just weary as never before? Oh, it is good that my eyes do not shine any more! Calmly I look at the wind-blown grass of the plain, calmly I hear in the marshes a bittern complain.

[1930s]

603. Николай Гумилев(1886–1921). Читатель книг

Reader of books, I also tried to find my heaven in the knowledge which obeys, I always loved them, — strange ways that wind where neither hope nor reminiscence stays. Into new chapters eagerly to roam, upon the stream of many lines to ride, and watch the growing waves and splashing foam, and listen to the roar of rising tide! But after dusk.. how horrible the shade behind the shelf and icon in the night, and, like a moon that shimmers on the glade, the pendulum — immovable and bright!

[1930s]

604. Николай Гумилев (1886–1921). Портрет мужчины

His eyes are hidden underground lakes, forgotten kingly halls, with floors untrod, upon his brow the highest shame makes its mark, and he will never speak of God. His lips — they are a purple wound that's made by poisoned daggers. Early silent grown and overcast with melancholy shade, they ever summon to a joy unknown. His hands are full-moon marble, they are such on which damnation will forever last, for they have crucified and used to touch young sorceresses in the ages past His fate is in the centuries that lapse to be the dream of people who would slay, and of the poets; at his birth, perhaps, a bloody comet melted, far away. Within his soul — age-old offences live, within his soul unnamed sorrow's tarry, his reminiscences he would not give for all the flowers of Cyprid or of Mary. His wrath is not a sacrilegious wrath, and tender hue his silken cheeks maintain. And he can smile, and he can also laugh, but weep… he cannot ever weep again.

[1930s]

605. Николай Гумилев (1886–1921). Орел

The eagle flew ahead and toward the height, through starry gateways to the Powers' Throne, and full of beauty was his kingly flight, and in the sun his brown feathers shone. Where had he lived? Perhaps it was a King who kept him chained, a prisoner, till now, and he had cried to greet the maiden-spring, that loved a prince with melancholy brow. Or maybe in a wizard's gloomy den when he was looking out the narrow door the height above enchanted him and then turned to a sun what was a heart before. What matters that? The perfect azure heights unfolded, ever luring him ahead and ever on he flew, three days and nights till in his bliss he smothered and was dead. (…) Rays of the planets pierced the heavens through magnificent, divinely frozen rays, but, never knowing perish, on he flew and watched those planets with a lifeless gaze. And more than once worlds tumbled, making room for more, and the archangel's trumpet came, and yet alone the eagle's gorgeous tomb did never fall a victim of the game.

16 July [1930]

606. Николай Гумилев (1886–1921). Душа и тело [271]

I Above the city night is soaring, till each sound grows softer, duller every chord. And you, my soul, are keeping silence still, have mercy for the souls of marble, Lord. And to this speech my soul did answer give (as though a harp was singing in the skies): «Why was I ever made to come and live within this hum an frame, which I despise? I hastened towards a glory new and rich, leaving my home; I must have been insane, for me this earth is now a ball, to which the prisoner is fastened with a chain. And, oh, this love, how I have grown to hate this illness, of which none on earth are free, which ever darkens with its shade the fate of worlds so wondrous, although strange to me. And if there is one thing that keeps me sealed to shining planets and to days of old, that thing is grief, my only trusted shield, that thing is sorrow, full of scorn, and cold». II The clouds were covered with a greenish rust, the golden sunset turned into gray, and i addressed my body: «Now you must reply to all the soul has had to say!» And to my speech my body answered so — a common body, but with blood aflame: «The meaning of this life I do not know, though I have heard that «love» can be its name. (…) A woman, too, I love…but when 1 kiss her lowered eyes, it is a strange thing, and I am drunk, and overcome with bliss, as in a storm, or drinking from a spring. And yet for all I want or take today, for all my dreams, and all my joys and sorrow as well befits a man, I will repay with that sure peril which will come tomorrow.» III And when the word of God was set aflame as Big Dipper in the darkness blue, the body and the soul before me canie, and asked of me: «Who, questioner, are you?» I lowered at the impudent my eyes, and slowly condescended to reply: «Pray, answer, do you think a dog is wise that howls when the moon is bright on high? Then can it be for you to question me, to whom all time since worlds began to flower, until the day that they will cease to be is but the smallest fraction of an hour? Me, who, like lgdrazil, the tree, does grow through Universes seven times seven, whose eyes regard as equal dust below the meadows of the earth and those of Heaven? I am who sleeps…

271

Unfinished translation from the collection Огненный столп (1921). Variant in the last line second stanza of part three in the manuscript: «that bays the moon when it is bright on high». Igdrazil: a gigantic ash-tree, which in ancient Spain symbolized the universe

[1930s]

607. Георгий Иванов (1894–1958). Разрозненные строфы

It's yes and no. A star on high burns bright a hundred thousand years. The star burns bright. The years go by, and so an era disappears. There is no joy. The world is still and sad, and through the icy sting of the ethereal spaces, spring, carrying roses in her hand, flies to the sad and silent land.

24 June 1961

608. Георгий Иванов (1894–1958). «Меня влечет обратно в край Гафиза…»

The land of Hafiz calls me back, to rove where my Gulnara's gaze shone green and bright, and tentwise over her and me above was spread the sapphire chasuble of night. And memory, deprived of all these things, looks everywhere for landmarks of that vale where waits the lute, forsaken, and where sings to ageless rose, an ageless nightingale.

[1960s]

609. Георгий Иванов (1894–1958). «Оттого и томит меня шорох травы…»

I am filled with a sadness by whispering grass — it will wither, and roses will die and decay, and your own precious body will also, alas, be changed into flowers, and turned into clay. All memory of us will vanish. And then skilled fingers will fashion a beautiful thing, a pitcher of clay, which will live once again and be filled to its wide golden throat at spring. And someone, perhaps, by the well where they meet embracing each other, with sunset aglow, will drop that dear clay, which will slip to her feet and ring as it breaks into fragments below.