I feel the need for someone I can pray to.
Imagine that a common lowly ant
Was overcome by yearning for a way to
Prostrate himself—as humble supplicant.
At peace no more, dispirited, frustrated
So all the world appeared to him mundane.
A goddess in his image he created
And worshipped her; his prayers were not in vain.
For when his days of prayer had numbered seven,
She did appear to him one winter’s night
Without a single augury from heaven…
The jacket that she wore was far too light.
Forgetting all the past – both pain and pleasure,
He opened wide the door out to the street
And kissed her hands, chapped raw from wind and weather,
And then the shabby slippers on her feet.
Two shadows moved like dancers in the entry.
And wordlessly communion seemed to flow.
And they were fair and wise like heaven’s gentry,
But sad like mortal folk on earth below.
О. Б.
Мне нужно на кого-нибудь молиться.
Подумайте, простому муравью
вдруг захотелось в ноженьки валиться,
поверить в очарованность свою!
И муравья тогда покой покинул,
все показалось будничным ему,
и муравей создал себе богиню
по образу и духу своему.
И в день седьмой, в какое-то мгновенье,
она возникла из ночных огней
без всякого небесного знаменья...
Пальтишко было легкое на ней.
Все позабыв — и радости и муки,
он двери распахнул в свое жилье
и целовал обветренные руки
и старенькие туфельки ее.
И тени их качались на пороге.
Безмолвный разговор они вели,
красивые и мудрые, как боги,
и грустные, как жители земли.
«2 Useless with eyes like nails to / penetrate the black soil. / As true as a nail in the mind / you are not here, not here. It's useless turning my eyes / and fumbling round the whole sky. / Rain. Pails of rain-water. But / you are not there, not there. Neither one of the two. Bone is...»
«3 Because once when you were young and bold / you did not leave me to rot alive among / bodies without souls or fall dead among walls / I will not let you die altogether. Because, fresh and clean, you took me / out by the hand, to freedom and brought spring leaves / in bundles into my ho...»
«4 The blow muffled through years of / forgetting, of not knowing: / That blow reaches me now like the song of a / woman, or like horses neighing. Through an inert building, a song of passion and / the blow comes: / dulled by forgetfulness, by not knowing which is / a soundless thicket....»
«It crawls, the underground snake, / crawls, with its load of people. / And each one has his / newspaper, his skin / disease; a twitch of chewing; / newspaper caries. / Masticators of gum, / readers of newspapers. And who are the readers? old men? athletes? / soldiers? No face, no fe...»