From the cycle POEMS OF MIDNIGHT
You spoke at last...
No wooer on bended knees
Those words, those fateful words would thus have spoken...
You said them like a captive who has broken
His chains, and fled, and through the blur of tears
A virgin grove of nodding birches sees.
The silence sang and hummed; the sun's pure blaze
Cut through the shadows, and the darkness banished;
The wine's flat taste had changed; the present vanished;
A world transformed by magic met your gaze.
And I who was to be a murderess,
I, cruelly doomed that fragile dream to shatter,
Sought to prolong it and refused to utter
The brutal words that would destroy such bliss.
И наконец ты слово произнес
Не так, как те... что на одно колено —
А так, как тот, кто вырвался из плена
И видит сень священную берез
Сквозь радугу невольных слез.
И вкруг тебя запела тишина,
И чистым солнцем сумрак озарился,
И мир на миг один преобразился,
И странно изменился вкус вина.
И даже я, кому убийцей быть
Божественного слова предстояло,
Почти благоговейно замолчала,
Чтоб жизнь благословенную продлить.
«To My Sister / / I dreamt of the old house / where I spent my childhood years, / and the heart, as before, finds / comfort, and love, and warmth. / / I dreamt of Christmas, the tree, / and my sister laughing out loud, / from morning, the rosy windows / sparkle tenderly. / ...»
«With both knees pressed down on the still, / Mouth fixed like a fish’s to the pane, / I breathe, ant then breathe in again: / So, clinging to life, a body will / Suck from a greyish sack: so the heart bounds / Insistently: it’s time, it’s time to go! / The firmament is heavy on the...»
«To Faina Grigorievna Ranevskaya I forgive you almost all your sins / Only two of them I can’t allow: / Poetry you whisper to yourself, / And you kiss out loud. / / Sin, have fun, and blossom with the years. / Only heed my mother advice — / A kiss, my darling, isn’t for the ears...»
«To Khodasevich / / A childhood memory: those pears, / wrinkled, little, tight, / and hidden inside / tart flesh that puckered the mouth: / exactly so my delight / in the bitter shards of your verse. »