Sleep on a Summer’s Night
(Five Verses)
2
All morning from nine to two
A vexed spirit from the ozone rides
About the garden among snakes and rosemary
And the exhausted oleanders.
The white balcony turns blue.
Asleep — deserted by the muse — on all sides.
Hoary raspberry stalks stand and beyond them
Lies the violet ground of his preludes.
Who was whispering at supper?
Who gave a parting wave to the roses?
Once again Chopin sends out a dispatch,
A ballade that pines for reply.
All summer she is with diphtheria
And is not getting any better.
Now, is it the black keys or the blood
That after awhile make us turn from her?
A touch of a hand —
And half the universe — is alone,
And the fields out there are glowing
And breath is stifled by tobacco.
Сон в летнюю ночь
Пять стихотворений
2
Все утро с девяти до двух
Из сада шел томящий дух
Озона, змей и розмарина,
И олеандры разморило.
Синеет белый мезонин.
На мызе — сон, кругом — безлюдье.
Седой малинник, а за ним
Лиловый грунт его прелюдий.
Кому ужонок прошипел?
Кому прощально машет розан?
Опять депешею Шопен
К балладе страждущей отозван.
Когда ее не излечить,
Все лето будет в дифтерите.
Сейчас ли, черные ключи,
Иль позже кровь нам отворить ей?
Прикосновение руки —
И полвселенной — в изоляции,
И там плантации пылятся
И душно дышат табаки.
«My bag breaks / and everything falls to the floor. / It occurs to me / the world is a grin that flickers / on a hanged man's face.»
«The death-dole / of an old / skull, / flickering with slippery mice. / And the dole / of an old delirium, / to be wed / above the roofs of the hice. / That's all.»
«The bowl is banished from the long tables — / someone has drunk the liquor of the gods. / Divine wine is a beast-feast also — / the oxen raise their blue-gray horns.»
«A herd of horses shod with hours / jangling like thunder, wheel in a field. / Their rugged bodies are rank with time, / their flashing eyes ablaze with days.»