Leonid Martynov
Sunflower

I

About the house a multitude of moths
Were fluttering in an impatient round dance,
But the householder, waving them away,
Shut up the windows;
And to me, a guest chance-sent,
Opened the doors with like unwillingness.
I realized that this tea drinking at night
Was not arranged for me.

But what to do?
I entered
And sat down uninvited at the table.
The thick blackberry jam
Glared with its sugared eye,
The tartlets snorted condemnation,
The samovar gurgled, like a Tula¹
Police inspector, all bemedaled for effort—
As if I’d drink it all, devour it!
“She’s come!” said the artist.
And so I waited: for an angel with pursed lips
Smelling of patchouli, rustling in batiste,
To flutter out, old-fashioned, to the table.

But you came —
And I remember clearly
How you came: neither devil nor angel
But a warm strong creature,
Just such an involuntary guest as I myself.
His wife?
No: that’s gossip, lies.
Bred in domestic stuffiness and gloom
As dry as any stick
He never had a wife like that to kiss!
That I knew. But could not understand
One thing: why your face should be familiar.
Your eyes, your mouth, your hair
That fell across your forehead.
I exclaimed:
“I've seen you sometime
Although I’ve never seen you.
But all the same, I did see you today
Although today I’d never seen you!’’

And again:
“I’ve seen you somewhere
Though I’ve never seen you!”
“Tea?”
“Thank you; no.”
I got up and went out
Out onto the veranda, where
The frenzied moths were swarming.
You cried:
“Come back, this minute!”
I threw wide open the door to the veranda
And into the room burst forty thousand moths
To dance in coolness:
They jostled, tumbled,
Brushing the pollen from each other’s wings—
And would have made me dizzy
If I had not been gazing in your eyes.

2

He did not intend to paint a picture
But, pulling out his youthful canvases,
Considered: could he not cut them up
For useful rags? Dully he scraped the paint;
Then neighbors called him.
On with his slippers, and he went off somewhere
Leaving the canvas on the easel,
The box of paints unfastened.
He had abandoned things exhaled
With the intoxicated breath of art,
And I — though nothing of a painter —
Felt suddenly an urge to paint.
From a bottle I poured some linseed oil,
Mixed colors
And softening in them the sharp point of a brush
Set fearlessly to work.
It was you I sketched.
But for a body
I drew a glistening stalk,
For shoulders I drew leaves
Like drooping wings,
And only in the face did I leave likeness
In that feeble image —
Of a beautiful but captive plant
Putting out roots in the vegetable patch.
And that hoary radish grows beside you,
And turnips complain that in the beds
The soil is black: and with its simple venom
The henbane dreams of poisoning everything.
No sun: hidden behind the clouds.
And she, the gardener, comes
With wrinkled, feeble hands
To grasp that lovely face...

Here the artist rushed up, crying
“Who said you could paint?"
“Go to hell!" with self-control I told him
And walked straight out of that gray dusty house.

3

“Did you spend the night in the flowerbeds?
I ask, did you sleep in the flowerbeds?
If you did what were your dreams?”

4

But not one landlady would let me in.
Crossing themselves, they slammed the door,
Curtained the windows close
With trembling hands. My gaze
And aspect were too fearful for them.
The evening came:
I gloomily spread my blanket
Between the flowerbeds in the town garden
But got no sleep. And the grass tickled
And how the crows snarled, out of the poplars!

So the night passed.
Not waiting for the dawn
Through damp gray foggy streets
I left the town.
Before my eyes
The paths redoubled, leading to the fields.

And it was dawn.
The ground grew rosy:
Beetroot were ripening in it.
I stood and breathed
All the scents rising from the pink-flushed earth.

Dawn passed. In the fields, day began.
I did not stop; I went on, breathing
The honeyed smell of midday, long sustained.
In search of something, but not finding it.

But the plants whispered fiercely “Search!”
And suddenly in the intersection
Of roads that lead on to the future years
You started up, as if from underground.

You cried:
“Where did you spend the night,
Did you have breakfast?
How much worry
Your leaving caused me!
Two whole days I've been looking, searching for you!”

It is the end.
On the roseate field
We drink milk, eat bread —
Your warm bread
That tastes of overripe wild strawberries.

The summer earth
Warms our feet.
Wise, omniscient nature
Soothes us, wanderers.
Sunflower
Out of an alien garden,
You have come home now to your native fields!

____
1 An industrial town south of Moscow that is celebrated for its metal craftsmanship and, traditionally, the manufacture of the finest samovars.

Translated by J. R. Rowland