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.
«Lot's wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt. / Genesis Holy Lot was a-going behind God's angel, / He seemed huge and bright on a hill, huge and black. / But the heart of his wife whispered stronger and stranger: / "It's not very late, you have time to look back / At these ...»
«Many items, maybe, will be proud / To be sung by my poetic voice: / That is, wordless, roaring around, / Or eroding stones underground, / Or forcing its way through smoke’s coils. / And I want to take into account / Fire, wind and water, so far… / That is why my dreams, as I have ...»
«I was not here for hundreds years, / But nothing changed for ages here… / In the same way the divine lyre / Pours bliss from the eternal crests. Same are the waters and stars’ throngs, / And endless bleakness of skies’ domes, / And flying seeds in airy flows, / And mothers sing th...»
«When, in the night, I wait for her, impatient, / Life seems to me, as hanging by a thread. / What just means liberty, or youth, or approbation, / When compared with the gentle piper's tread? And she came in, threw out the mantle's edges, / Declined to me with a sincere heed. / I say to he...»