Is it possible to praise a dead woman?
She was an alien to her people and full of strength.
The power of her love for a stranger
brought her to a hot and violent grave.
The firm black swallows of her eyebrows
swoop down at me from the grave.
They tell me they’ve lain too long
In their cold bed at Stockholm.
Your people were proud of an ancestor’s violin —
Your neck bending over its neck improved its looks.
When you opened your mouth to laugh,
you too looked more Italian, and better-looking.
I keep your heavy memory,
wild one, little bear. Mignon...
But the wheels of the mills are fast in winter,
the horn of the postman is thinly blowing.
Возможна ли женщине мертвой хвала?
Она в отчужденьи и в силе,
Ее чужелюбая власть привела
К насильственной жаркой могиле.
И твердые ласточки круглых бровей
Из гроба ко мне прилетели
Сказать, что они отлежались в своей
Холодной стокгольмской постели.
И прадеда скрипкой гордился твой род,
От шейки ее хорошея,
И ты раскрывала свой аленький рот,
Смеясь, итальянясь, русея...
Я тяжкую память твою берегу —
Дичок, медвежонок, Миньона, —
Но мельниц колеса зимуют в снегу,
И стынет рожок почтальона.
«The night is now departing / It’s lifting its dark shrouds, / And pilot, voyage starting, / Is bound for heaven’s clouds. He’s swallowed in the vapour, / In jet plane disappeared, / A cross as marked by draper, / A blotch on linen sheared. Below in foreign places / Are gay noct...»
«There’s no way for me to go back! / I scream at full anguish. / I run around the squares / Of the chess board. I step on every other one: / The others — are not mine. / Oh, my stingy joy, / You split me, too, in two. So that I’m to measure by half. / That I’m to believe by ha...»
«At first You loved / Beauty best, / Curls touched with henna, / Plaintive call of the zurna, / Ringing — of hooves — on flint, / A shapely dismount, / In two Turkish slippers / Embroidered with semi-precious . . . Then You loved — someone else — / Sharp arched eyebrow, / S...»
«Still darkness, darkness everywhere. / And still so early in the world, / Innumerable stars appear / And each so bright in the night air / That if the earth could count them there, / It would sleep through Easter, lulled / By chanted psalm and chanted prayer. Still darkness, darkness ev...»