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 tar are dusted over.
In the Louvre the ocean's daughter stands — alas —
Beautiful like poplar in her bliss
To grind sugary marble into dust
Like a squirrel she climbs Acropolis.
Understanding not a single sentence
She is reading Faustus on the train
All the while bemoaning that King Louis
On the throne of France does not remain.
«My voice is weak but not my will, / It’s better even without love. / High skies and mountain winds, / And my thoughts now innocent. Insomnia, my nurse, is elsewhere. / I’m not brooding by cold ashes. / And the curved hand on the tower clock, / Is no longer a deadly arrow. How the p...»
«The sky’s blue lacquer grows dim, / And louder the song of the flute, / It’s only a pipe of clay, / There’s no need for its complaint. / Who told it all my sins, / And inspired it to absolve me?.. / Or is its voice repeating / Your last poems to me?»
«Oh, and the day was cold, / In Peter’s wondrous city! / The sunset a crimson bonfire, / And slow shadows thickened. Let him not long for my eyes, / Prophetic and unchanging, / He will have a lifetime of verse, / The prayers of my proud lips.»
«For Nikolai Nedobrovo There’s a secret border in human closeness, / That love’s being, love’s passion, cannot pass — / Though lips are sealed together in dreadful silence, / Though hearts break in two with love’s distress. And friendship too is powerless, and years / Of sublime f...»