Стихотворения

468. THE ABYSS {*}

When sacred Night sweeps heavenward, she takes the glad, the winsome day, and folding it, rolls up its golden carpet that had been spread over an abyssmal pit. Gone vision-like is the external world, and man, a homeless orphan, has to face in utter helplessness, naked, alone, the blackness of immeasurable space. Upon himself he has to lean; with mind abolished, thought unfathered, in the dim depths of his soul he sinks, for nothing comes from outside to support or limit him. All life and brightness seem an ancient dream — while in the very substance of the night, unravelled, alien, he now perceives a fateful something that is his by right. <1944>

469. AUTUMN {*}

When Autumn has just come, there is most brief a lull: brief but divine. All day 'tis like some precious prism, and limpidly the evenings shine. Where lusty sickles swung and corn-ears bent the plain is empty now: wider it seems. Alone a silky filament across the idle furrow gleams. The airy void, now birdless, is revealed, but still remote is the first whirl of snow; and stainless skies in mellow blueness flow upon the hushed reposing field. <Январь 1944>

470. APPEASEMENT {*}

The storm withdrew, but Thor had found his oak, and there it lay magnificently slain, and from its limbs a remnant of blue smoke spread to bright trees repainted by the rain — — while thrush and oriole made haste to mend their broken melodies throughout the grove, upon the crests of which was propped the end of a virescent rainbow edged with mauve. <Осень 1944>

471. TEARS {*}

Human tears. О the tears! you that flow when life is begun — or half-gone, tears unseen, tears unknown, you that none can number or drain, you that run like the streamlets of rain from the low clouds of Autumn, long before dawn… <1944>

Владислав Ходасевич {*}

472. THE MONKEY {*}

The heat was fierce. Great forests were on fire. Time dragged its feet in dust. A cock was crowing in an adjacent lot. As I pushed open my garden-gate I saw beside the road a wandering Serb asleep upon a bench his back against the palings. He was lean and very black, and down his half-bared breast there hung a heavy silver cross, diverting the trickling sweat. Upon the fence above him, clad in a crimson petticoat, his monkey sat munching greedily the dusty leaves of a syringa bush; a leathern collar drawn backwards by its heavy chain bit deep into her throat. Hearing me pass, the man stirred, wiped his face and asked me for some water. He took one sip to see whether the drink was not too cold, then placed a saucerful upon the bench, and, instantly, the monkey slipped down and clasped the saucer with both hands dipping her thumbs; then, on all fours, she drank, her elbows pressed against the bench, her chin touching the boards, her backbone arching higher than her bald head. Thus, surely, did Darius bend to a puddle on the road when fleeing from Alexander's thundering phalanges. When the last drop was sucked the monkey swept the saucer off the bench, and raised her head, and offered me her black wet little hand. Oh, I have pressed the fingers of great poets, leaders of men, fair women, but no hand had ever been so exquisitely shaped nor had touched mine with such a thrill of kinship, and no man's eyes had peered into my soul with such deep wisdom… Legends of lost ages awoke in me thanks to that dingy beast and suddenly I saw life in its fullness and with a rush of wind and wave and worlds the organ music of the universe boomed in my ears, as it had done before in immemorial woodlands. And the Serb then went his way thumping his tambourine: on his left shoulder, like an Indian prince upon an elephant, his monkey swayed. A huge incarnadine but sunless sun hung in a milky haze. The sultry summer flowed endlessly upon the wilting wheat. That day the war broke out, that very day.

473. POEM {*}

What is the use time and rhyme? We live in peril, paupers all. The tailors sit, the builders climb, but coats will tear and houses fall. And only seldom with a sob of tenderness I hear… oh, quite a different existence throb through this mortality and blight. Thus does a wife, when days are dull, place breathlessly, with loving care, her hand upon her body, full of the live burden swelling there. <1941>

474. ORPHEUS {*}

Brightly lit from above I am sitting in my circular room; this is I — looking up at a sky made of stucco, at a sixty-watt sun in that sky. All around me, and also lit brightly, all around me my furniture stands, chair and table and bed — and I wonder sitting there what to do with my hands. Frost-engendered white feathery palmtrees on the window-panes silently bloom; loud and quick clicks the watch in my pocket as I sit in my circular room. Oh, the leaden, the beggarly bareness of a life where no issue I see! Whom on earth could I tell how I pity my own self and the things around me? And then clasping my knees I start slowly to sway backwards and forwards, and soon I am speaking in verse, I am crooning to myself as I sway in a swoon. What a vague, what a passionate murmur lacking any intelligent plan; but a sound may be truer than reason and a word may be stronger than man. And then melody, melody, melody blends my accents and joins in their quest, and a delicate, delicate, delicate pointed blade seems to enter my breast. High above my own spirit I tower, high above mortal matter I grow: subterranean flames lick my ankles, past my brow the cool galaxies flow. With big eyes — as my singing grows wilder — with the eyes of a serpent maybe, I keep watching the helpless expression of the poor things that listen to me. And the room and the furniture slowly, slowly start in a circle to sail, and a great heavy lyre is from nowhere handed me by a ghost through the gale. And the sixty-watt sun has now vanished, and away the false heavens are blown: on the smoothness of glossy black boulders this is Orpheus standing alone. <1941>

ПЕРЕВОДЫ НА ФРАНЦУЗСКИЙ

Александр Пушкин

475. «Dans le d'esert du monde, immense et triste espace…» {*}

Dans le d'esert du monde, immense et triste espace, trois sources ont jailli myst'erieusement; celle de la jouvence, eau brillante et fugace, qui dans son cours press'e bouillonne 'eperdument; celle de Castalie, o`u chante la pens'ee. Mais la derni`ere source est l'eau d' oubli glac'ee… <Январь 1937>

476. «Ne me les chante pas, ma belle…» {*}

Ne me les chante pas, ma belle, ces chansons de la G'eorgie, leur amertume me rappelle une autre rive, une autre vie. Il me rappelle, ton langage cruel, une nuit, une plaine, un clair de lune et le visage d'une pauvre fille lointaine. Cette ombre fatale et touchante, lorsque je te vois, je l'oublie, mais aussit^ot que ta voix chante, voici l'image ressurgie. Ne me les chante pas, ma belle, ces chansons de la G'eorgie; leur amertume me rappelle une autre rive, une autre vie. <Январь 1937>

477. «Je ne puis m'endormir. La nuit…» {*}

Je ne puis m'endormir. La nuit recouvre tout, lourde de r^eve. Seule une montre va sans tr`eve, monotone, aupr`es de mon lit. Lach'esis, comm`ere loquace, frisson de l'ombre, instant qui passe, Bruit du destin trotte-menu, l'eger, lassant, que me veux-tu? Que me veux-tu, morne murmure? Es-tu la petite voix dure du temps, du jour que j'ai perdu? <Январь 1937>

478. «Pourquoi le vent troublant la plaine…» {*}

Pourquoi le vent troublant la plaine va-t-il virer dans un ravin, tandis que sur l'onde sereine un navire l'attend en vain? Demande-lui. Pourquoi, morose, fuyant les tours, l'aigle se pose sur un chicot? Demande-lui. Comme la lune aime la nuit, pourquoi Desd'emone aime-t-elle son Maure? Parce que le vent, le coeur de femme et l'aigle errant ne connaissent de loi mortelle. L`eve ton front, po`ete 'elu; rien ne t'encha^ine, toi non plus. <Январь 1937>