The grapes in the royal garden have rusted;
the concubine, waiting, sleeps by the wall.
Veins of Palestine, heavy with sap,
in you flows the ancient sadness of Saul.
Like a five-day-old wound his mouth crusts over:
thick is the blood with its term at hand.
How long it has been since King Saul felt like drinking!
How long his eye has been probing the land.
The roses of Jericho burn on his temples,
like bellows his chest heaves, working its load,
and they drag, and they drag, their souls all sighing,
the young men of Palestine with their black blood.
Виноградины тщетно в садах ржавели,
И наложница, тщетно прождав, уснула.
Палестинские жилы! — Смолы тяже́ле
Протекает в вас древняя грусть Саула.
Пятидневною раною рот запёкся.
Тяжек ход твой, о кровь, приближаясь к сроку!
Так давно уж Саулу-Царю не пьётся,
Так давно уже землю пытает око.
Иерихонские розы горят на скулах,
И работает грудь наподобье горна.
И влачат, и влачат этот вздох Саулов
Палестинские отроки с кровью чёрной.
«For 20 years an American woman / Must go to far-away Egypt / Forswearing the Titanic's guidance / She sleeps on bottom darker than the crypt In America the trumpets sing out loud / And monoliths arise of red steel towers / And then give away to chilly clouds / Their lips that with black...»
«Sweetness and tenderness — like sisters alike are your marks — / The wasp and the bee suckle honey then flutter as one — / Life ends, beach sand chills overnight, and the heaven gets dark, / And carried away on black litter is yesterday's sun. Ah, tender rosebush, delicate emanation! / ...»
«A ghostlike scene is glimmering / Weak choirs of shades remain / With silk has draped Melpomene / Her temple's windowpanes / Frost crunches in the yard / Black chariots stand in row / People and objects are disheveled / Street crackles with hot snow. Bit by bit the servants pick apart...»
«To me the meaning of Venetian life is clear / Bleary though it be and fruitless; / Here she stares with smile instilling fear / Through the dirty bluish window glass. Thinning air, blue veins through skin of arm, / A green brocade and the whitening snow / From the coat they take a corpse,...»