June would be clammy, January crisp;
and concrete solid, sand unstable.
For there was order. Real order.
People got up and went to work.
And then they watched The Happy FeIlas
at cinemas. For there was order.
In pedigrees and in parades,
political police, and apparatus,
even in parodies — there was order.
People made fun, and were afraid,
only of those they were supposed to,
for there was order, real order.
An order of the bent and bashed.
In hours, in minutes, and in seconds,
in years as well, there was real order.
It would have gone on without end,
but then a certain person fell,
and all this order went to hell.
Июнь был зноен. Январь был зябок.
Бетон был прочен. Песок был зыбок.
Порядок был. Большой порядок.
С утра вставали на работу.
Потом «Веселые ребята»
в кино смотрели. Был порядок.
Он был в породах и парадах,
и в органах, и в аппаратах,
в пародиях — и то порядок.
Над кем не надо — не смеялись,
кого положено — боялись.
Порядок был — большой порядок.
Порядок поротых и гнутых,
в часах, секундах и минутах,
в годах — везде большой порядок.
Он длился б век и вечность длился,
но некий человек свалился,
и весь порядок — развалился.
«Shakespeare’s play, his twenty-fourth — / Time is writing it impassively. / By the leaden river what can we, / Who know what such feasts are, / Do, except read Hamlet, Caesar, Lear? / Or escort Juliet to her bed, and christen / Her death, poor dove, with torches and singing; / Or p...»
«What does a certain woman know / about the hour of her death? / — Osip Mandelstam Tallest, most elegant of us, why does memory / Insist you swim up from the years, pass / Swaying down a train, searching for me, / Transparent profile through the carriage-glass? / Were you angel or bird...»
«I thought I knew all the paths / And precipices of insomnia, / But this is a trumpet-blast / And like a charge of cavalry. / I enter an empty house / That used to be someone’s home, / It’s quiet, only white shadows / In a stranger’s mirrors swim. / And what is that in a mist? ...»
«But I warn you, / I am living for the last time. / Not as a swallow, not as a maple, / Not as a reed nor as a star, / Not as water from a spring, / Not as bells in a tower — / Shall I return to trouble you / Nor visit other people’s dreams / With lamentation. »