The sailors near the port
shouted in chorus, demanding wine,
and over Stambul and over the Bosphorus
the full moon shone.
Tonight they will hurl an unfaithful wife
to the bottom of the bay,
a wife who was too beautiful
and looked like the moon.
She loved her daydreams,
the summer-house in the reed thicket,
old women fortune-tellers and their fortune-telling
and everything the Pasha did not like.
Father was sad, but understands
and whispers to the husband: «Well, is it time?»,
but the younger sister does not lift
her stubborn eyes and muses:
«Many, many other lovers
lie in the deep bays,
intertwined, languid and silent...
What happiness to be among them!»
Еще близ порта орали хором
Матросы, требуя вина,
А над Стамбулом и над Босфором
Сверкнула полная луна.
Сегодня ночью на дно залива
Швырнут неверную жену,
Жену, что слишком была красива
И походила на луну.
Она любила свои мечтанья,
Беседку в чаще камыша,
Старух гадальщиц, и их гаданья,
И все, что не любил паша.
Отец печален, но понимает
И шепчет мужу: «что ж, пора?»
Но глаз упрямых не поднимает,
Мечтает младшая сестра:
— Так много, много в глухих заливах
Лежит любовников других,
Сплетенных, томных и молчаливых…
Какое счастье быть средь них!
«The poet can’t be too sad / Or, worse still, too sly. / For general understanding, / The poet must be open wide. The footlights in front of him, / Bare and bright, deathly; / The cold blaze of limelight / Branding his face. But every reader is a secret, / A buried treasure, of sort...»
«Bursting into the house like startled thunder / The first one comes, breathless, laughing, / Fluttering at my throat and spinning / To the sound of its own applause. Another is born in the silence of midnight, / Stealing upon me from who knows where. / It peers at me from an empty mirror,...»
«Did Beatrice have Dantesque visions? / Did Laura write Petrarchan sonnets: / I’ve taught women to speak, O God — / But how can I teach them silence?»
«Wrung-out insomnias, / Pooled wax at the base / Of a guttering candle, / The morning’s first sound / Of a hundred white bells. / Warm sills under Chernigov moons. / Bees and clover, darkness and dust, / Suffocating heat.»