Sergey Esenin
The Black Man

My friend, my friend
I am so very sick!
I myself don’t know from where this pain took hold
Whether the wind whistles
Over the empty and unpeopled field
Or whether, like a grove in September
Alcohol overthrows my brains

My head flaps its ears
Like a bird flaps its wings
To it on its neck my feet
Loom up unbearably.
The black man,
The black, black
Black man
Sits down by me on the bed
The black man
Won’t let me sleep all night

The black man
Finds his place in a disgusting book
And, speaking nasally above me,
Like a monk above a corpse
Reads to me the life
Of some scoundrel and debauchee
Arousing in my soul anguish and fear.
The black man
Black, black!

“Listen, listen —”
He mutters to me
“In the book are many wonderful
Thoughts and plans
This man
Spent his life in the land
Of the most revolting
Thugs and charlatans

In December in that land
The snow is clean as the very devil
And blizzards start
Gay spinning-wheels.
That man was an opportunist
But of the highest
And best grade

He was graceful
Moreover a poet
Of small
But sure strength
And some woman
Forty-odd years old
He called ‘bad girl’
And ‘my darling’

It’s lucky — he said —
He had deftness of mind and hands
All clumsy souls
Are known to be unlucky
If tortuous
And lying gestures
Are the cause of much torment—
So what?

In thunder, in tempests,
In the world’s frost
In heavy losses
And when you are sad
To seem happy and simple —
That is the world’s highest art.

“Black man!
How dare you?
After all, you don’t eke out
Your living as a diver.
What to me is the life
Of a scandalous poet?
Please, find someone else
To tell your tale.”

The black man
Looks straight at me.
And his eyes are covered
By light blue vomit —
As if he wants to tell me
That I am a swindler and a thief
Having just
Pulled off a brazen theft

My friend, my friend
I am so very sick
I myself don’t know from where this pain took hold
Whether the wind whistles
Over the empty and unpeopled field
Or whether, like a grove in September,
Alcohol overthrows my brains

A frosty night
The crossroads are quiet and serene
I am alone at the window
Waiting neither for guest nor friend.
The whole of the plain is covered
By soft and shifting lime
And the trees, like horsemen,
Gather in their orchard.

Somewhere an ill-omened
Night bird cries.
The wooden riders
Sow the clatter of hooves.
Once more the black man
Sits down in my armchair,
Having raised his top hat
And cast his frock-coat aside.

“Listen, listen!”
He wheezes, looking me in the face,
Bending nearer and nearer
All the time —
“I didn’t see that one
Of the scoundrels
Suffered from sleeplessness.
More fool he!

Well, suppose I got it wrong.
Look, there shines the moon.
What then in your drunken world
Matters more than sleep?
Perhaps, with fat thighs,
‘She’ will come secretly,
And you will read
Your sickly, languorous lyrics

Ah, I love poets!
Such a diverting race.
In them always I find
A story, known by heart —
Like a long-haired degenerate
Who tells an acned woman student
All about villages
While oozing sexual languor.

I don’t know, I don’t remember,
In some village,
Perhaps, in Kaluga,
Or maybe, in Riazan,
Lived a boy
In a simple peasant family,
Yellow-haired,
With light-blue eyes …

And there he became an adult,
Moreover a poet,
Of small
But sure strength
And some woman
Forty-odd years old
He called ‘bad girl’
And ‘my darling’.”

“Black man!
You foul guest.
Your infamy
Has long been spreading.”
I am enraged, furious,
And my walking-stick flies
Straight at his face
At the bridge of his nose…

The moon has died,
The sky turns blue through the window.
Oh, night,
What ruin did you bring?
I stand in a top hat
No-one is with me
I am alone
And the mirror is broken…

Translated by Tim Jones