Those poems that I wrote and forgot
and burnt before I could forget them —
there are not enough hammers and chisels
to knock them down and beat them down.
Those poems that I shouted out on the radio
and published in the newspaper:
better for me to have silenced them, so to speak —
I forged not steel but paper.
No matter! I'm still walking and breathing.
I'll still write something more revealing.
Те стихи, что я написал и забыл
И сжег перед тем, как забыть —
Не хватило б резцов, недостало б зубил,
Чтобы их сковырнуть или сбить.
Те стихи, что по радио я прокричал
И в газете опубликовал —
Лучше я бы их, так сказать, промолчал,
Я не сталь, а бумагу ковал.
Ничего! Я покуда хожу и дышу.
Я еще настоящее напишу.
«1 I don't believe forebodings, nor do omens / Frighten me. I do not run from slander / Nor from poison. On earth there is no death. / All are immortal. All is immortal. No need / To be afraid of death at seventeen / Nor yet at seventy. Reality and light / Exist, but neither death nor da...»
«My soul is borne out on the wind. / Through the opaqueness of her earthly case she glitters like a sword. / She is free; she rides her body as the whirlwind the storm. / She is free from the death of the flesh. / / Her passage is brief as the lightning, / As the flash of the outgoing se...»
«In fields hopeless and dumb / Droops the pale-bladed grain; / It is dozing and numb / Amid dreams that are vain... / With a high sudden hum / The field tosses its mane: / "Unto us Christ is come!" / The wild news shakes the plain. / Like a wind-beaten drum / Shouts the quivering gr...»
«My insatiable memory is like / A melting asphalt roadway: / I remember all who have passed along it, / Every movement of their life... / The tracks of iron wheels, of teeth, / The rusty tracks of injury and anguish. / Nearby the sweet birdlike prints / Of a dead daughter's little shoes...»