Unmoved by bullets, confrontations,
Unmoved by songs of celebration!
And so I gape, with admiration:
“What people! What a nation!”
A nation — such, that with elation —
A mouthpiece of vastness stationed —
A poet, gapes with adoration,
Dumbstruck: O, what a nation!
It won’t submit to occupation,
Or to the luxury its shown, —
You try to beat it with starvation?
Try starving — granite stone!
(It’s there — it cuts a stone with care,
Its grammar won’t grow stagnant…
Engrained inside, it waits! — it flares! —
A garnet, makes - a magnet.)
…Took radium out of its chest,
And gave you — a donation!
Alive, — with Europe still abreast —
To bury such a nation?
If you yourself are – such, my Lord!
You’ll do it as I’m willing -
Don’t sanctify it with your horde, -
Breathe life into the living!
Его и пуля не берёт,
И песня не берёт!
Так и стою, раскрывши рот:
— Народ! Какой народ!
Народ — такой, что и поэт —
Глашатай всех широт, —
Что и поэт, раскрывши рот,
Стоит — такой народ!
Когда ни сила не берёт,
Ни дара благодать, —
Измором взять такой народ?
Гранит — измором взять!
(Сидит — и камешек гранит,
И грамотку хранит…
В твоей груди зарыт — горит! —
Гранат, творит — магнит.)
…Что радий из своей груди
Достал и подал: вот!
Живым — Европы посреди —
Зарыть такой народ?
Бог! Если ты и сам — такой,
Народ моей любви
Не со святыми упокой —
С живыми оживи!
«My dear Telemachus, / The Trojan War / is over now; I don’t recall who won it. / The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave / so many dead so far from their own homeland. / But still, my homeward way has proved too long. / While w...»
«Twice I woke up tonight and wandered to / the window. And the lights down on the street, / like pale omission points, tried to complete / the fragment of a sentence spoken through / sleep, but diminished darkness, too. I’d dreamt that you were pregnant, and in spite / of having lived so...»
«No matter what went on around them; no matter / what message the snowstorm was straining to utter; / or how crowded they thought that wooden affair; / or that there was nothing for them anywhere. Above their encampment, the sky. cold and idle, / and leaning as big things will do over little...»
«I, who have traveled half my earthly road, / make my appearance in the Luxembourg / and contemplate the petrified gray curls / of thinkers and of scribblers. Gents and broads / are strolling to and fro ; a whiskered / blue copper glistens from the thicket ; / the fountain purrs, the chil...»