Not long ago, when I was at a dinner,
I heard a toast — and here I write it down.
"I had a dream" the speaker said to us
"That I had died, and yet I was not dead
And there before me lay a final road
On which I walked, with neither food nor fire.
An empty plain stretched out in all directions
With crouching hills, whose tops held up the sky.
I walked all day, and yet all day saw nothing —
No smoke, no house, no turning right or left.
Beside the road there stood, in place of milestones,
Some rough-hewn slabs which marked successive graves.
I read the worn inscriptions that were on them
It seemed that babies had been buried there
At two weeks old from birth, at three perhaps,
They died, when they had scarcely yet been born.
Then as it came to midnight, I encountered
An ancient man, his hair as white as snow.
He sat beside the road and from a horn
Drank strong black wine and nibbled pungent cheese.
'Tell me, old man' I put to him a question,
'You chew your cheese, you from a horn drink wine.
How have you reached so great a length of living
Here, where no others live a single year?'
He said 'You are mistaken, passing stranger.
Here people live into the depths of age.
Here in these graves lie men as old as I am.
You have misread the funerary inscriptions.
We do not count the passing years as you do.
We reckon, when we measure length of living,
Not years that we have lived, but hours of friendship.'"
At that the speaker stood up from the table —
"My friends, now let us drink to years of friendship!"
But we were silent. If life's reckoned thus,
Perhaps not all of us would live a year!
Недавно тост я слышал на пиру,
И вот он здесь записан на бумагу.
«Приснилось мне, — сказал нам тамада,
Что умер я, и все-таки не умер,
Что я не жив, и все-таки лежит
Передо мной последняя дорога.
Я шел по ней без хлеба, без огня,
Кругом качалась белая равнина,
Присевшие на корточки холмы
На согнутых хребтах держали небо.
Я шел по ней, весь день я не видал
Ни дыма, ни жилья, ни перекрестка,
Торчали вместо верстовых столбов
Могильные обломанные плиты —
Я надписи истертые читал,
Здесь были похоронены младенцы,
По две недели от роду, по три,
Умершие, едва успев родиться.
К полуночи я встретил старика,
Седой, как лунь, сидел он у дороги
И пил из рога черное вино,
Пахучим козьим сыром заедая.
«Скажи, отец, — спросил я у него, —
Ты сыр жуешь, ты пьешь вино из рога,
Как дожил ты до старости такой
Здесь, где никто не доживал до года?»
Старик, погладив мокрые усы,
Сказал: «Ты ошибаешься, прохожий,
Здесь до глубокой старости живут,
Здесь сверстники мои лежат в могилах,
Ты надписи неправильно прочел —
У нас другое летоисчисленье:
Мы измеряем, долго ли ты жил,
Не днями жизни, а часами дружбы».
И тамада поднялся над столом:
«Так выпьем же, друзья, за годы дружбы!»
Но мы молчали. Если так считать —
Боюсь, не каждый доживет до года!
«Homesickness! That long / Exposure to misery! / It’s all the same to me – / Where I’m utterly lonely Or what stones I wander / Home by, with my sacks, / Home that’s no more mine / Than a hospital, a barracks. It’s all the same to me, what / Faces I bristle among, a lion / ...»
«Cut veins: irrecoverably / Irreplaceably, life whips out. / Bring out basins and bowls! / Though the bowl’s — too low, / The basin’s — too shallow. Over the lip, watch it flow, / To black earth, to feed the reeds. / Irreplaceably, verse will go, / Irrevocably, irrecoverably.»
«A weight, on my brow / The laurel of praise. / "I can’t sing, anyhow," / "But you will." "The way, Sound (Transform me / To sawdust, at best!) / Like milk, you see is – / Gone from my breast. Dry and empty, / At spring’s height: / Feeling’s dead twig." / "– An ancient ...»
«Dis-tances: miles, versts... / We’re dis-severed, dis-persed, / They’ve rendered us silent, terse, / At the far ends of the earth. Distances: tracts, versts... / We’re disjointed, and disbursed, / Displayed, splayed, un-destroyed, / They don’t know we’re... an alloy Of ins...»