An honest man
should look others straight in the eye.
We don’t know why.
What if the honest man
has watery, bloodshot eyes?
What if the dishonest one
has terrific eyesight?
Somehow, those who served as safe-keepers
in every time and place
learned to judge truthfulness
by firmness of gaze.
Did the spies who protected,
say, Sulla really have the right
to sort dishonest from honest?
And was Tamerlane’s secret service,
for instance, really
made up of moralists?
Everyone who sees has the right
to run their eyes madly up and down
and be judged not by their gaze,
not by scent or sound,
but by word and deed.
Честный человек
должен прямо смотреть в глаза.
Почему — неизвестно.
Может быть, у честного человека
заболели глаза и слезятся?
Может быть, нечестный
обладает прекрасным зрением?
Почему-то в карательных службах
стольких эпох и народов
приучают правдивость и честность
проверять по твердости взгляда.
Неужели охранка,
скажем, Суллы имела право
разбирать нечестных и честных?
Неужели контрразведка,
например, Тамерлана
состояла из моралистов?
Каждый зрячий имеет право
суетливо бегать глазами
и оцениваться не по взгляду,
не по обонянью и слуху,
а по слову и делу.
«Black goats I herded with my sister; they / Grazed by red rocks; the grass rose stiff and stinging. / Warming their backs, stones to the foot-hills clinging / Slept dumbly on. And sheer blue shone the bay. / By the gnarled silver of an olive flinging / My drowsy limbs, in its dry shade I l...»
«From the walls the paper's blue is vanished, / The daguerreotypes, the ikons banished. / Only there the deepened blue appears / Where these hid it, hanging through the years. From the heart the memory is perished, / Perished all that long ago it cherished! / Those remain, of whom death hi...»
«She sits on tumulus Savoor, and stares, / Old woman Death, upon the crowded road. / Like a blue flame the small flax-flower flares / Thick through the meadows sowed. And says old woman Death: "Hey, traveler! / Does any one want linen, linen fit / For funeral wear? A shroud, madam or sir, ...»
«Warmth and light, buzzing bumblebees, wheat ears and grasses, / Azure skies — of high summer the birth… / To his prodigal son will the Lord say: "Confess, pray — / Have you known true contentment on earth?" And forgetting all else save the golden and endless / Fields of wheat, the ser...»