Under a coxcomb of a milky white
Isaac has built a graying pigeon cage
The crozier irritates the graying quiet
Gradations of the air the heart can gauge.
There's wandering ghost of century-old requiem
Then the grand bearing of the shroud
Genessarian* darkness in decrepit seine
Of Lenten week, a voice that weeps aloud.
Upon warm altars smoke glows
And then a priest exudes an orphaned cry
A regal man: there is clean snow
On the shoulders, and savage porphyry.
Sophie's and Peter's Grand Cathedrals that withstood
Centuries; warehouses of air and light
Grain hangars of the universal good
And corn-kilns of New Testament.
In the harsh troubled year, not to your side
The spirit drags across the steps in peace,
The wolf's trail of disaster reaches wide
And will not change over the centuries.
Free is the slave who once has conquered fear
And who beyond all measure kept, through grief,
In deep cornbins, in chilly granaries
The grain of utter and complete belief.
Исакий под фатой молочной белизны
Стоит седою голубятней,
И посох бередит седые тишины
И чин воздушный сердцу внятный.
Столетних панихид блуждающий призрак,
Широкий вынос плащаницы,
И в ветхом неводе генисаретский мрак
Великопостные седмицы.
Ветхозаветный дым на теплых алтарях
И иерея возглас сирый,
Смиренник царственный: снег чистый на плечах
И одичалые порфиры.
Соборы вечные Софии и Петра,
Амбары воздуха и света,
Зернохранилища вселенского добра,
И риги нового завета.
Не к вам влечется дух в годины тяжких бед,
Сюда влачится по ступеням
Широкопасмурным несчастья волчий след,
Ему вовеки не изменим.
Зане свободен раб, преодолевший страх,
И сохранилось свыше меры
В прохладных житницах, в глубоких закромах
Зерно глубокой, полной веры.
«to Valentina Serova That's how we live, without forgetting, / Today it's him, tomorrow I. / The cup of death goes round the table / And each must wait his turn to die. If I am blind to how you treat me. / It's not because I cannot see. / It is because, around the table, / The cup comes...»
«to Valentina Serova In a dream, I saw a wedding / And I think the bride was you. / You the bride and I a beggar / At the porch — it may be true! Let it happen as I dreamed it! / Only promise, as you stand / At the porch, to have the kindness — / Put no alms into my hand!»
«to Valentina Serova With glass a thousand miles thick / Parting has glazed the windows of your flat; / And I look through, as from another world, / But not a sound is audible through that. I see you pass and sit down by the window. / You smile at someone; you get up unheard. / You speak....»
«You get from time to time a man / Who's every woman's silent friend — / A friend without ulterior aim, / A friend on whom she can depend. He's like the lifebelt on the deck / Which hangs and waits, for years unheeded, / Until at last it saves a life, / That final moment when it's need...»