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.
«To Lydia Zinoviev-Annibal For days on end we sailed the river Ocean / To meet the day; our sails are stretched and sure / Our course, resistless land propels our motion; / The voice of waves grows weary and obscure, The orb of day goes blind and burns carnationred; / at last, night falls, ...»
«Your love is like the Milky Way / Whose stellar dew inside me glimmers. / In dreams, its hidden torment shimmers / Like diamonds rippling in the waves. You are, like astral fluid, bitter, / The light of tears that pierces graves. / I am the skyline that obeys / The dawn, its blind and u...»
«The barren slope of the meandering valley / Is overgrown with hoary, wiry grass. / Spurge shows up white. Eroded beds of clay / Reveal the sparkling lead and shale and mica. The water-worn and slaty walls sprout capers; / A crevice clasps the olive’s withered trunk; / Above the hill, th...»
«A sacred wood was here. The messenger of gods / Would let his winged foot fall lightly on these glades. / The onetime site of cities kept no trace of their ruin. / In flocks, sheep creep along the bronze inclines. The slopes are woodless. In the green twilight, the mountains / Form a jagged...»