Here among you: your lodgings, your lucre, your smoke,
Your ladies, your Legislatures,
Having not got used to you, having not been blunted by you
Like a certain —
Schumann scudding along with spring on the sly:
From above! and beyond!
Like a nightingale’s suspended tremolo —
A certain one — is chosen.
The most timorous one, and having stretched him on the rack —
You lick his feet!
Having lost his way among your hernias and love-handles
God is left to wander among your lechers.
Superfluous! Embroidered! Walk-out! Upstart! Uppity
And not grown out of it . . . Unwilling to submit
To the gallows... Among your riot of currencies and visas
An exile from Vega — from a distant star.
Здесь, меж вами: домами, деньгами, дымами
Дамами, Думами,
Не слюбившись с вами, не сбившись с вами,
Неким —
Шуманом пронося под полой весну:
Выше! и́з виду!
Соловьиным тремоло на весу —
Некий — избранный.
Боязливейший, ибо взяв на дыб —
Ноги лижете!
Заблудившийся между грыж и глыб
Бог в блудилище.
Лишний! Вышний! Выходец! Вызов! Ввысь
Не отвыкший… Виселиц
Не принявший… В рвани валют и виз
Беги — выходец.
«So early that it hadn’t dawned, / The ringing windowpanes awoke me. / A moistened pretzel made of stone, — / Beneath me, Venice floated calmly. Now, all was calm, but all the while, / While still asleep, I heard a cry / And like a mark that had been silenced, / It still disturbed th...»
«A click of window glass had roused me / Out of my sleep at early dawn. / Beneath me Venice swam in water, / A sodden pretzel made of stone. It was all quiet now; however, / While still asleep, I heard a cry — / And, like a sign that had been silence, / It still disturbed the morning s...»
«It snowed and snowed throughout the land, / A ceaseless snowing. / On the table, a candle burned; / A flame was glowing. Like a swarm of gnats in summer / That flock to a light, / Snowflakes flew to the windowpane, / Afloat in the night. The storm drew arrows on the glass / And circl...»
«And the just man trailed God's shining agent, / over a black mountain, in his giant track, / while a restless voice kept harrying his woman: / "It's not too late, you can still look back at the red towers of your native Sodom, / the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, / at the ...»