Not a broken rib —
A broken wing.
Not to the shooters shot —
Through chest. Not to take out
This bullet. Wing can't be repaired.
He walked impaired.
***
Sticky is crown of thorns on the head!
What is the noise of mob to one dead,
The swan's down of woman's flattery...
He walked, deaf and lonely,
Freezing over the sunsets
With emptiness of eyeless statues.
But one thing still lived in him:
The broken wing.
14
Не проломанное ребро —
Переломленное крыло.
Не расстрельщиками навылет
Грудь простреленная. Не вынуть
Этой пули. Не чинят крыл.
Изуродованный ходил.
* * *
Цепок, цепок венец из терний!
Что усопшему — трепет черни,
Женской лести лебяжий пух...
Проходил, одинок и глух,
Замораживая закаты
Пустотою безглазых статуй.
Лишь одно ещё в нём жило:
Переломленное крыло.
«How the world does change! And I change just the same! / I go by but one name, / Yet not mine, but ours, is the name I'm given. / We are many. Living / Am I. So my blood might not grow cold, I've died / More — far more deaths than one. / How many dead bodies I have cast aside / From ...»
«Florence was my stepmother, / But I came to rest in Ravenna, / Passer-by, speak not of betrayal, / Let death seal such events. Above my white-washed tomb / A pigeon coos, sweet bird, / I dream only of my city, / To her alone keep my word. Songs played with a broken lute / Sound diffe...»
«Guardian angel was watching, / In my room where fire glowed. / He kept eye over the lodging, / Where, in ailment, I abode. Driven frail by the sickness, / From my fellows far away, / I would dream, and in sequence / Before me the visions lay. I could see myself headed / From my birth...»
«I have seen in a dream a juniper brush, / I have heard a distant metallical crush, / A ringing of amethyst berries I caught, / And quietly sleeping, I liked it a lot. I sensed through the dream the sap in the air. / Looking in through the branches I was aware, / In the gloom of the wood, ...»