As people listen intently
(a river’s mouth to its source)
that’s how they smell a flower
to the depths, till they lose all sense.
That’s how they feel their deepest
craving in dark air,
as children lying in blue sheets
peer into memory.
And that’s how a young boy feels
when his blood begins to change.
When people fall in love with love
they fling themselves in the abyss.
1
Так вслушиваются (в исток
Вслушивается — устье).
Так внюхиваются в цветок:
Вглубь — до потери чувства!
Так в воздухе, который синь —
Жажда, которой дна нет.
Так дети, в синеве простынь,
Всматриваются в память.
Так вчувствовывается в кровь
Отрок — доселе лотос.
…Так влюбливаются в любовь:
Впадываются в пропасть.
«I don’t know if you’re dead or still living, / If I should seek you on earth, or alas, / Sitting pensively, in the evening, / Warmly grieve for the one who has passed. All to you: Daily prayer and thought, / And insomnia’s feverish rise, / The white flock of the poems I wrote, / A...»
«I don't know if you're alive or dead. / Can you on earth be sought, / Or only when the sunsets fade / Be mourned serenely in my thought? All is for you: the daily prayer, / The sleepless heat at night, / And of my verses, the white / Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire. No-one was mor...»
«I'll leave your quiet yard and your white house — / Let life be empty and with light complete. / I'll sing the glory to you in my verse / Like not one woman has sung glory yet. / And that dear girlfriend you remember / In heaven you created for her sight, / I'm trading product that is ...»
«I have not heard the tales of Ossian, / I have not tasted age-old wine — / why then do I seem to see a field / and Scotland's murderous moon? And in the sinister silence I seem to hear / the roll-call of the raven and the harp, / and, streaming in the wind, the scarves of men-at-arms / ...»