2
Useless with eyes like nails to
penetrate the black soil.
As true as a nail in the mind
you are not here, not here.
It's useless turning my eyes
and fumbling round the whole sky.
Rain. Pails of rain-water. But
you are not there, not there.
Neither one of the two. Bone is
too much bone. And spirit is too much spirit.
Where is the real you? All of you?
Too much here. Too much there.
And I won’t exchange you for sand
and steam. You took me for kin,
and I won’t give you up for a corpse
and a ghost: a here, and a there.
It’s not you, not you, not you,
however much priests intone
that death and life are one:
God’s too much God, worm — too much worm!
You are one thing, corpse and spirit.
We won’t give you up for the smoke of
censers
or flowers
on graves
If you are anywhere, it’s here in
us: and we honour best all those who
have gone by despising division.
It is all of you that has gone.
2
Напрасно глазом — как гвоздём,
Пронизываю чернозём:
В сознании — верней гвоздя:
Здесь нет тебя — и нет тебя.
Напрасно в ока оборот
Обшариваю небосвод:
— Дождь! дождевой воды бадья.
Там нет тебя — и нет тебя.
Нет, никоторое из двух:
Кость слишком — кость, дух слишком — дух.
Где — ты? где — тот? где — сам? где — весь?
Там — слишком там, здесь — слишком здесь.
Не подменю тебя песком
И па́ром. Взявшего — родством
За труп и призрак не отдам.
Здесь — слишком здесь, там — слишком там.
Не ты — не ты — не ты — не ты.
Что́ бы ни пели нам попы,
Что смерть есть жизнь и жизнь есть смерть, —
Бог — слишком Бог, червь — слишком червь.
На труп и призрак — неделим!
Не отдадим тебя за дым
Кадил,
Цветы
Могил.
И если где-нибудь ты есть —
Так — в нас. И лучшая вам честь,
Ушедшие — презреть раскол:
Совсем ушёл. Со всем — ушёл.
«My night — I think of you obsessively, / My day — indifferent: let it be! / I turned and smiled at my destiny / That brought me only misery. The fumes of yesterday are dire, / The flames that burn me will not die, / It seems to me, this blazing fire / Will not become a sunlit sky. ...»
«Either I remained with you, / Or you came with me, my angel! / But our fears did not come true, / We avoided separation. / It’s not your sigh of deep despair, / Or your complex accusations, / But your clear and peaceful stare / That fills my soul with trepidation.»
«In my room, there is a serpent, / Slow and gorgeous to behold… / She is calm and introverted / Much like I, and just as cold. As I’m writing in the evening, / She is sitting by my side, / Her indifferent eyes won’t leave me, / Shining emerald in the night. In the dark, I sob and ...»
«There’s hardly any body left, / The tortured lips have all but withered! / I didn’t want this kind of death, / The time-frame that I chose was different. / I had an image: two big clouds / Collide together, fast and free, / And lightning’s fire plummets down, / And mighty ecstasy...»