A Psalter of Tsar' Aleksii,
Its pages — scarves, funeral groats,
Restless Russia
Wanders, wheezing, through decrees.
The peasant jacket is torn,
The disgraced headscarf flaps .
Now a bench by' the door would be good,
And tales about Constantinople,
Honey buns on the table,
The bells of Dormition across the fence...
Oh, to hide from the rumors
Of the indefatigability of iron.
To take a nap, as before, on the stove bench...
Except that gunpowder and smoke are in the wind...
Is it foreign devils that the quietest
Tsar Is washing off in the bathhouse?
Aren't they binning Avvakum
To the cawing of countless crows?..
From Bukhara to the Lapp tents
Calico May is flaming.
Under apple blossom, the jacket and
The lenten Psalter are swept away...
Behind the Soviet summer of posters
Flower roses and ginger.
In the luminescence of astral sowing,
Like an ear of grain to its furrows,
Eve gleams in her nakedness
Smiling at other worlds.
Псалтырь царя Алексия,
В страницах убрусы, кутья,
Неприкаянная Россия
По уставам бродит кряхтя
Изодрана душегрейка
Опальный треплется плат…
Теперь бы в сенцах скамейки,
Рассказы про Китяж-град.
На столе медовые пышки,
За тыном успенский звон
Зачураться бы от наслышки
Про железный неугомон
Как в былом заснуть на лежанке…
Только в ветре порох и гарь…
Не заморскую ль нечисть в баньке
Отмывает тишайший царь?
Не сжигают ли Аввакума
Под вороний несметный грай?…
...
От Бухар до лопского чума
Полыхает кумачный май.
Заметает яблонным цветом
Душегрейку, постный Псалтырь…
За плакатным советским летом
Расцветают розы, имбирь.
В лечезарье звездного сева,
Как чреватый колос браздам,
Наготою сияет Ева,
Улыбаясь юным мирам.
«I come out to the path, alone, / Night and wildness are referred to God, / Through the mist, the road gleams with stone, / Stars are speaking in the shinning lot. There is grave and wonderful in heaven; / Earth is sleeping in a pale-blue light... / Why is then my heart such pined and heav...»
«Alone, I come to the road. / The stony track gleams in the mist: / the calm night listens to God, / and star is speaking to star. All’s marvellous, grave, in the sky! / Earth sleeps in the radiant blue… / Why such pain then, such weight on the heart? / Do I regret, wait for somethin...»
«Don’t tempt me with your tender ruses, / with the return of passion’s blaze: / a disenchanted man refuses / inveiglements of former days! / My faith in faithfulness has faded, / my faith in love has passed its prime; / I won’t indugle another time / in dreams degrading and degrad...»
«I like the Lutheran service, calm and grave, / I like its ritual, solemn and severe; / the message of these bare and empty walls / I bow to, I revere. But don’t you see? Why surely you must know / that for the last time Faith is with us there. / She has not crossed the threshold yet to ...»