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.
«No more Europe, no more America. / The end of Tsarskoye, of Moscow, too. / A fit of nuclear hysteria – / life atomized into a radiant blue. Transparent, all-forgiving haze will stretch / over the seas. And he who could have done / something yet chose not to, will be left / in the expa...»
«You took me – / I was sullen, without affection, / with only black thoughts / and convict ravings / and a widow’s unhealed anguish / and a past love that wasn’t past / You took me as a wife – / not for joy’s sake, / not of your own accord / but out of love.»
«Moscow, who are you? / Enchantress or enchanted? / Forger of freedom / or fettered lady? / What thought furrows your brow / as you plot your worldwide plot? / Are you a shining window / into another age? / O Moscow, are you femme fatale / or fetter-fated, / fated or fêted? / D...»
«Moscow, who are you? / Are you charming or charmed? / Are you forging freedom / Or chained? / What thought knits your brow? / With the world of conspire. / Perhaps you’re a window, giving light / Into another time, / Or an expert cat you’re: / Do sciences order to crucify, / ...»