Sleep on a Summer’s Night
(Five Verses)
4
I hang inside the writer’s utensil
A large lustrous violet drop.
Beneath the house — an enigmatic trench.
A hundredth part of the hard air
Is kindled by a puff of sizzling coke,
And scarcely has the merest daybreak been cut off
When again the pink-hued night
Is enclosed in paradox, like she is.
And she whispers: before the morning comes
Bring to a close these parched and bleached
Uncertainties with the sharp echoes
Of balls in a bowling alley.
The wind outside, the serge cloth and the sludge,
And the reach of the echoes from the gate
Of the nail-factory, show through plain tears,
And as daybreak shreds the boardwalk,
Streaks take custody of the dawn.
I cling inside the writer’s utensil,
Thick acerbic violet lead.
Сон в летнюю ночь
Пять стихотворений
4
Я вишу на пере у творца
Крупной каплей лилового лоска.
Под домами — загадки канав.
Шибко воздух ли соткой и коксом
По вокзалам дышал и зажегся,
Но, едва лишь зарю доконав,
Снова розова ночь, как она,
И забор поражен парадоксом.
И бормочет: прерви до утра
Этих сохлых белил колебанье.
Грунт убит и червив до нутра,
Эхо чутко, как шар в кегельбане.
Вешний ветер, шевьот и грязца,
И гвоздильных застав отголоски,
И на утренней терке торца
От зари, как от хренной полоски,
Проступают отчетливо слезки.
Я креплюсь на пере у творца
Терпкой каплей густого свинца.
«When I look at the flight of the leaves in / their floating down on to the paving of cobbles / and see them swept up as if by an / artist who has finished his picture at last I think how (already nobody likes either / the way I stand, or my thoughtful face) / a manifestly yellow, decidedl...»
«Morning and evening, darkness and light — / Fishermen black and fishermen white. / The world’s like an ocean; like fishes are we, / Like fishes that swim in the depths of the sea. The world’s like an ocean where fishermen wait, / Preparing their nets, their hooks and their bait. / H...»
«Three songs there be that thrill the human breast — / Three songs with human joy and sorrow laden. / And one of them is happier than the rest — / The song a mother sings beside a cradle. The second by a mother, too, is sung — / Caressing icy cheeks with mourning fingers, / She sings...»
«There was a lad who once lived in our village, / He had a youthful bride with raven hair, / That self-same year when she and he turned twenty / Came war, and tore him from his bride so fair. The hero’s bride is now a hero’s widow. / Her hair is grey, her eyes have lost their fire; / T...»