Vyacheslav Ivanov
The Catch

Now the golden leafage is beggared.
Shining through the porches of autumn,
Shows the cool blue stillness of heaven.
Lo, the thin-trunked grove is transcended:
Carved in stone, a columned cathedral.
Smoke-scrolls wind about the frail friezes;
Flung above the doors is a curtain —
Open-work: like nets of God's fishers
That the catch has slipped through and broken,
Like thy tatters, sacred and lovely,
At the entrance of a white temple,
Oh thou golden mendicant music!

Translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky