Collected Poems

Midst everyday nighttime, there sparkles

a fountain harmonious and high;

it plashes, it quivers, convoking

mirages of lands undescribed.

Around it there noiselessly hover,5

immerged in its silvery spray,

dragonflies, their wings in a sparkling

counterpoint to the magic display.

The fountain, loftily floating

its wondrous, its silvery voice,10

plashes, and quivers, convoking

mirages of love and of loss.

Undisturbed the dragonflies hover,

like diamonds sparkle their wings,

encircled by snowy-white roses15

that follow the font as it sings.

Midst everyday nighttime, there sparkles

a music with billowing might,

that plays like a fountain harmonious

o’er the crowd’s noisome, philistine plight.20

With its delicate plashing the fountain

has dissolved the sinister shade —

the dragonflies’ counterpoint mounting

were sparse echoes now-sparkling souls made.

I found a lengthy word with a non-Russian ending,

unwittingly, inside a children’s storybook,

and turned away from it with a strange kind of shudder.

That word contained the writhing of mysterious passions:

the growls, the howls, the whistles and the senseless visions,5

assassinated horses’ vitreous eyes,

the sinuous streets, the evil-auguring constructions,

a man, incarnadine, prostrate upon his back,

the bestial motions of somebody’s avid hands!

And, once upon a time, how sweet I used to find it10

to read of funny rabbits who would dance in spring

with guinea pigs on stumps beneath the moon!

But now the fateful word above my childhood tales,

storm-like, has rushed! Gone is their old simplicity;

and terrifying thoughts, during the doomful nights,15

now crepitate like gray newspaper sheets!

Out of Muscovy’s fierce rigor

He crossed hither in one stride.

To roaring seas he took a liking,

And to our tile-clad little town;

All along the shores he wandered,5

Sunburnt, rough-hewn, full of youth.

Wind. The ashen-tinted dunes.

The thudding of some axes yonder.

The motley colors of the patchwork

Of sails upon the rippled seas.10

A flock of gulls, the heav’nly vault,

Greenish, like a faience glaze.

Evenings passed in discourse sage.

Tankards. Somnolent companions.

Reveries in tones victorious15

Summoned carpenter-tsar Peter.

He pondered gravely at the table,

And the clock distinctly ticked.

I recall: his coarse mustache,

The resolute and fearless gaze,20

Shadows cast by head and elbows,

The shelving of the little tavern,

On the stove the evening’s shimmer,

And a pattern of blue squares.

The hour is pensive, the supper severe,

the predictions are treason and parting.

The nocturnal pearl bathes with its light

the petals of the oleander.

Apostle inclines toward apostle.5

The Christ has silvery hands.

The candles pray lucidly, and on the table

creep the winged insects of night.

I see a radiant cloud, I see a rooftop glisten

like a mirror, far away ... I listen

to breathing shade, light’s stillicide ...

You’re absent — why? You’re dead, and on a day

the humid world is bluish. God’s sacred spring is on her way,5

swelling, calling ... And you’ve died.

And yet, if every stream anew the wonder sings,

and yet, if every falling golden thaw-drop rings —

if these are not bedazzling lies,

but quivering, dulcet convocations: ‘Rise again’ —10

a mighty ‘Blossom!’, then you are in this refrain,

youre in this splendor, you’re alive! ...

An India invisible I rule:

come ’neath the azure of my realm,

I shall command my naked wizard

to change a snake into a bracelet for thee.

To thee, O princess who defies description,5

I offer, for a kiss, Ceylon:

and, for thy love, my whole, luxuriant, ancient,

star-weighty firmament.

My peacock and my panther, velvet-sheeny,

both languish: ’round the palace,10

like showers, the palmy copses patter:

we’re waiting, all of us, to see thy face.

Ill give thee earrings, twin teardrops of sunrise,

Ill give the heart out of my breast.

I’m emperor, and if you don’t believe it,15

then don’t — but come in any case.

Wipe off your teardrops and listen: One sunny midday,

an aged

carpenter forgot his glasses on his workbench. Laughing,

a boy ran in; paused; espied; sneaked up;

and touched the airy lenses. Instantly5

a sunny shimmer traversed the world, flashed across distant,

dreary lands, warming the blind, and cheering the sighted.

Like pallid dawn, my poetry sounds gently:

my fleeting cadences soon die away,

and it’s unlikely that a keen descendent

will recollect my avian sobriquet.

What can I do, my muse, my darling. We shall,5

in footnotes, unpretentiously endure...

I can’t sing forth, I can’t convey to others

how much they need to hold God’s shadow dear,

how we can see God’s shadow undulating

as through our motley curtains it transpires,10

how day and night are precious beakers holding

life-giving water and sidereal wine.

I can’t sing forth, I can’t convey — and, shortly,

they will forget this pallid dawn of mine,

and she who first forgets will be the same one15

on whom the gift of my last rays will shine.

And yet I am content, my muse — for silence

and tenderness you are; one can’t be sad

with you; from each day’s song the worldly turmoil b)

like a superfluous syllable, you’ve banned.20

Amid grandees of times Elizabethan

you shimmered too, you followed sumptuous customs;

the circle of ruff, the silv’ry satin that

encased your thigh, the wedgelike beard — in all of this

you were like other men... Thus was enfolded5

your godlike thunder in a succinct cape.

Haughty, aloof from theater’s alarums,

you easily, regretlessly relinquished

the laurels twining into a dry wreath,

concealing for all time your monstrous genius10

beneath a mask; and yet, your phantasms’ echoes

still vibrate for us: your Venetian Moor,

his anguish; Falstaff’s visage, like an udder

with pasted-on mustache; the raging Lear...

You are among us, you’re alive; your name, though,15

your image, too — deceiving, thus, the world —

you have submerged in your beloved Lethe.

It’s true, of course, a usurer had grown

accustomed, for a sum, to sign your work

(that Shakespeare — Will — who played the Ghost in Hamlet,20

who lived in pubs, and died before he could

digest in full his portion of a boar’s head) ...

The frigate breathed, your country you were leaving.

To Italy you went. A female voice

called singsong through the iron’s pattern,25

called to her balcony the tall inglese,

grown languid from the lemon-tinted moon

amid Verona’s streets. My inclination

is to imagine, possibly, the droll

and kind creator of Don Quixote30

exchanging with you a few casual words

while waiting for fresh horses — and the evening

was surely blue. The well behind the tavern

contained a pail’s pure tinkling sound .. . Reply —

whom did you love? Reveal yourself - whose memoirs35

refer to you in passing? Look what numbers

of lowly, worthless souls have left their trace,

what countless names Brantéme has for the asking!

Reveal yourself, god of iambic thunder,

you hundred-mouthed, unthinkably great bard!40

No! At the destined hour, when you felt banished

by God from your existence, you recalled

those secret manuscripts, fully aware

that your supremacy would rest unblemished

by public rumor’s unashaméd brand,45

that ever, midst the shifting dust of ages,

faceless you’d stay, like immortality

itself — then, in the distance, smiling, vanished.

Let us fold the wings of our visions.

It’s night. Buildings, all angular, on each other

topple. Shadows are fractured.

The street lamp is a broken flame.

In the room a wooden wind inclines5

the furniture. It’s hard for the mirror to retain

the table and the orange-laden tray.

And my face is emerald.

You are a flight, a poem, in your black dress,

of black angles in this motley world.10

You funereal theorem, you press

your sharp knee against the ceiling.

Good God, in this eerie, alien world,

letters of life, and whole lines,

have been transposed by the typesetters. Let’s fold15

our wings, my lofty angel.

Come hither, nebulous Leila!

Forsaken spring, to me return!

Sails of pale green, sails that will billow,

the palace gardens will unfurl.

Along their boundary eagles shimmer.5

With lazy murmurs the Neva

like Lethe flows. An elbow mark

was left by Pushkin on the granite.

Leila, stop it — that will do,

stop weeping, O my springtime bygone.10

Just look what a fine fish, light-blue,

is limned upon that floating signboard.

In Peter’s pastel sky all’s hushed.

There’s a flotilla of aery vapors,

and the octagonal wood paviors15

still have their layer of golden dust.

I heaved from my shoulder my pick and my shovel

into a corner of the barn,

I dried off my sweat, ambled out to greet sunset,

a bonfire cool and rosy-hued.

It peacefully blazed beyond towering beeches,5

in between funereal boughs,

where fleetingly shimmered ineffable echoes

of a vibrant nightingale,

and a guttural din, choirs of toads, gutta-percha-like,

sang resilient on the pond.10

It broke off. My forehead was trustingly, downily

brushed by the flight of a passing moth.

The hills grew more somber: there, flashed reassuringly

a twinkle of nocturnal lights.

In the distance, a train chugged and vanished. A lingering15

whistle lingeringly died...

The fragrance was grassy. Entranced I stood, thoughtless:

and, when the nebulous hoot was stilled,

I saw night had fallen, stars hung close above me,

and tears were streaming down my face.20

On Christmas Eve, toward midnight,

outside the window stood,

reborn, a chopped-down fir copse,

my argentated wood.

Amidst the misty moonlight5

I found the proper room.

That candle, my Svetlana,

between mirrors illume.

Across the basin’s water

the magic flame will float;10

accoasts in rapid order

the little nutshell boat.

And in the dusk, where, under

a lustre, melts parquet,

let’s hear what fortunes utters15

our little neighbor gray.

Upon the faded azure

the cards you can prepare...

One moment grand-dad’s scowling,

the next he lifts his brow.20

And he picks up and places

funereal-colored spades

upon the diamonds’ faces,

of lacquered, orange shade.

That’s how it is, Svetlana —25

morose grows your regard.

For us, no sham nirvana

is augured by these cards.

I’m not much of a wizard,

the grand-dad’s in his grave,30

so there is no one, is there,

to question hoary fate.

Immerged in darkening glimmer,

now everything recedes,

the luster’s crystal pendants,35

the white piano’s sheen.

The flame’s out in the nutshell...

And you are gone for good,

my legendary fir copse,

my argentated wood.40

Whence have you flown? What is this sorrow you are

breathing?

Explain to me, why do your lips, O winged one,

seem deathly pale, why are your wings with ocean scented?

The demon answers me: ‘You’re famished and you’re young,5

but sounds are not the thing to sate you. Do not touch them,

those strings discordant you yourself have strung.

No music’s more sublime than silence. You’re created

for unrelenting silence. Recognize its seal

upon a stone, on love, in stars above the roadway.’10

He’s vanished. Night dissolves. God orders me to sound.

He had a muse as his ice-skating teacher,

Terpsichore in winter guise — behold:

his brow is bared, he wears black riding breeches,

upon his chest there burns a medal’s gold.

He whirls, and underneath the diamond lightning5

of his intelligence-defying skate

breaks off its curve and, starlike, widens

the image of a flower ornate.

And thus, upon the ice compact and silky,

a sunflower is outlined. But wait —10

have I myself, by that melodious whistling,

not flashed before you with a poem’s skate?

I left behind a single verbal figure,

an instantly unfolding flower, inked.

And yet tomorrow, vertical and silent,15

the snow will dust the scribble-scrabbled rink.

The engine toward the country flies,

A crowd of tree trunks, shying, nimbly

goes scurrying up the incline:

the smoke, like a white billow, mingles

with birches’ motley Apriline.5

Velour banquettes inside the carriage

of summer covers are still free.

A yellow trackside dandelion

is visited by its first bee.

Where once there was a snowdrift, only10

an oblong, pitted isle is left

beside a ditch that’s turning verdant;

of springtime smelling, now grown wet,

the snow is overlaid with soot.

The country house is cold and twilit.15

The garden, to the joy of doves,

contains a cloud-reflecting puddle.

The columns and the aged roof,

also the elbow of the drainpipe —

there’s need of a fresh coat for all,20

a pall of green paint; on the wall

the merry shadow of the painter

and the ladder’s shadow fall.

The birches’ tops in their cool azure,

the country house, the summer days,25

are but the same, recurring image,

yet their perfection grows always.

From exile’s lamentations distanced,

lives on my every reminiscence

in an inverted quietude:30

What’s lost forever is immortal;

and this eternity inverted

is the proud soul’s beatitude.

One time, at night, the window sill

was loudly spattered by the rain.

The Lord his secret dream-book opened,

and chose me his most blissful dream.

Resounding with alarm familiar,5

night, loudly sobbing, shook the house.

My dream was a blue-colored roadway

that through a shady hamlet passed.

Beneath the soft mound of the cargo

the wheels creaked, muffled far below:10

supine, I rode home from the haying,

and shadows made the cart seem blue.

Again, with ponderous insistence,

at every turning of the dream,

the frame kept creaking and kept listing15

as the window breathed with rain.

And I, within my slumber’s blueness,

confused reality with dream:

which was that fateful, alien nightline,

the restless moaning of that frame —20

and which, amid warm hay, were daisies,

right here, close to my very lips,

and foliated shadows flowing

in ringlike torrents from above...

Neath twilight’s vault, into the meadows,

enveloped in the toppled smoke,

at full career the cars are heading

behind the engine’s fiery glow:

the baggage car, locked tight, foreboding,5

where trunks are piled on top of trunks,

where objects that have grown demented

awaken in the dark and clunk —

then, in succession, the four sleepers,

the whole row paneled with veneer,10

whose windows flash like mirrored lightning,

with fleeting, alternating fire.

An early drowsiness makes someone

pull down a leather window blind,

and, ’midst the clattering and crackling,15

the right refrain acutely finds.

Those not asleep don’t take their eyes off

the ceiling’s vague concavities,

where swings, beneath dim-filtered lamplight,

the tassel of a sliding shade.20

A trifling thing — a bolt untightened,

and, suddenly, beneath one’s head,

the clinging flange, the speeding iron,

jumps off the evil-fated rail.

And, up and down the nighttime flatland,25

the telegraph beats like a heart,

and people hurtle on a handcar,

their lanterns lifted in the dark.

A sorry thing: the night is dewy,

but here there’s wreckage, flame, lament...30

No wonder that the driver’s daughter

an eerie dream of ballast dreamt,

in which around the bend came howling

a hurtling multitude of wheels,

and to its doom a pair of angels35

a giant locomotive drove.

The first of them who manned the throttle

advanced his lever with a smirk,

as, incandescent feathers gleaming,

he peered into onrushing murk.40

The second one, the winged fireman,

with steely, scintillating scales,

untiringly, with blackened shovel,

hurled coal into the firebox blaze.

O recollection, piercing beam,

transfigure my exile,

transfix me, recollection

of Petersburg’s clouds, barge-like,

*midst windswept heavenly expanses,5

of unfrequented back-road fences,

of street lamps with expressions kind...

O’er my Neva, there come to mind

those twilights like the rustling

of obliquely shading pencils.10

All this the smoothly stroking painter

in front of me unfolded, and

I had the sense that only lately

this very wind my face had fanned,

which he’d depicted by the flying15

autumn leaves, by the untidy clouds,

and down the quay a humming flowed,

the bells in the penumbra dinned —

the cathedral’s bronzen swings...

What a familiar courtyard stands nearby,20

what stony posts! If I could only

step across, clamber inside,

stand for a while where snow-banks slumber,

and where logs lie, compactly stacked,

or neath the arch on the canal,25

where on the stony oval, tinted blue,

shimmer fortress and Neva.

A trifle — a mast’s denomination, plans — trailed

by a seagull, soars my life;

and, on the deck, a man, lap-robed,

inhales the radiance — it is I.

I see, upon a glossy postcard,5

a bay’s depravity of blue

and, white-toothed, a townlet with a retinue

of countless palms, and the abode in which I dwell.

At that same instant, with a cry, I’ll show you

myself, myself — but in a different town:10

like a parrot snapping with its beak,

I scrabble at the scrapbook with its cards.

That one — that’s me, with phantom suitcase;

and that’s me on a chilly street

walking at you, as if from a screen,15

and blurring into blindness.

Oh ... I sense inside my legs, grown heavy,

the trains that leave without me

and what a wealth of countries have not warmed me,

where I shan’t live, and never shall be warmed!20

And, in his armchair, the voyager from Eden

describes, his hands behind his head,

sucking the pipe smoke with a whistle,

his love of loves — a tropic bay.

‘So then you’re Russian? It’s the first time

I have met a Russian...’

And the lively, delicately bulging

eyes examine me. ‘You take your tea

with lemon, I already know.5

I also know that you have icons

where you live, and samovars.’

A pretty girl. A British glow

spreads across her tender skin.

She laughs, she speaks at a quick clip:10

‘Frankly, our town is dullish,

though the river’s charming!

Do you row?’ Big girl,

with sloping shoulders, hands that are large,

bereft of rings.15

Thus, at the vicar’s, over tea,

brand-new acquaintances, we chat,

and I endeavor to be droll.

In troubling, dulcet worry lost

at the legs that she has crossed5

and at her vivid lips I peer,

then, once again, I quickly shift

my cheeky gaze. She, as expected,

has come with aunt, although the latter

is busy with her left-wing patter — ,10

and, contradicting her, the vicar,

a timid man (large Adam’s apple),

with a brown-eyed, canine squint,

chokes upon a nervous cough.

Tea stronger than a Munich beer.

In the room the air is hazy.

In the hearth a flamelet lazy

gleams, like a butterfly on boulders.

I’ve overstayed — it’s time to go now...5

I rise; a nod, and then another,

I say good-bye without hand-thrusting,

For so demands the local custom;

I hurry down a step, and out

into a February day.10

Out of the heavens, without a lull,

descends a ceaseless, two-week flow.

Isn’t it true how very dull

an ancient student town can grow?

The houses — each more comely

than the next — whose ancient rosiness

gains cheer from bicycles reposing

near; the college gates by which

the bishop stands stonily inside his niche,5

and higher, there is a black sun-like dial;

the fountains, hollow-sounding coolness,

the passageways, and then the barriers,

all iron roses with their thorns,

which, in the dark of early morn,10

it is no easy task to climb;

and, right there, next door,

a tavern and an antique shop,

and beside a graveyard’s tombstones

a thriving market in the square.15

There is meat in hunks all pink;

the shiny fishes’ uncooked stink;

and knives and pots; and also jackets

from wardrobes that shall remain nameless;

and, separate, in strange positions,5

some crooked stands where they sold books

freeze motionless, as if concealing

some arcane alchemistic treatise;

one time I happened through this rubbish

to rummage, on a winter day,10

when, adding to an exile’s sadness,

it snowed, as in a Russian town —

I found some works by Pushkin, and

some Dahl upon a magic counter.

Behind this square’s uneven outlines

there is a cinema, and thither

into the foggy depths we wandered,

where steeds midst swirls of dust rushed past

across the canvas screen of light,5

the viewer magically alarming,

where, with a kiss’s silhouette,

all ended at the proper time;

where tragedy was always sprinkled

with a beneficial lesson;10

where droll and touching Charlie Chaplin

came mincing with his toes thrust out,

where, now and then, we chanced to yawn.

And, once again, the crooked alleys,

the gigantic age-old gates —

right in the center of the town,

a barber shop where they shaved Newton,

in ancient mystery enveloped,5

the tavern known as the Blue Bull.

There, beyond the stream, the houses,

the century-old turf tramped down

into a dark-green, even carpet

to suit the needs of human games,10

the wood-like sound of soccer kicks

in the cold air. Such was the world

where I from Russian clouds was hurled.

In the morning, out of bed I’d hop,

and to a lecture rush

with whistling cape; at last a hush

over the chilly amphitheater fell

as the professor of anatomy5

mounted the podium, a sage

with vacant, childlike eyes;

with varicolored chalk

a Japanese design he’d trace

of intertwined blood vessels, or10

the human skull, and on the way

a naughty joke he might let fly —

stamping of feet was our reply.

Supper. The regal dining hall

graced by the likeness of Henry the Eighth —

those tight-sheathed calves, that beard —

all by the sumptuous Holbein limned;

inside that singularly towering hall5

that choir lofts made appear so tall,

it was perpetually murky

despite the violet conflagration,

that filtered through the colored panes.

The naked benches stretched along10

the naked tables; there we sat,

in the black cowls of brothers’ capes,

and ate the over-seasoned soups

made out of pallid vegetables.

I lived within an antique chamber,

but, inside its desert silence,

I hardly savored the shades’ presence.

Clutching his bear from Muscovy,

esteemed the boxer’s fate,5

of Italic beauty dreaming

lame Byron passed his student days.

I remembered his distress —

his swim across the Hellespont

to lose some weight.10

But I have cooled toward his creations...

so do forgive my unromantic side —

to me the marble roses of a Keats

have more charm than all those stagey storms.

But to think of poetry was harmful

in those years. To twist a screw of brass,

so that, in the water’s droplets,

the world would radiantly appear

minute — that is what occupied my day.5

I’m fond of the serene alignment

of green laboratory lamps,

the motley of the complex tables,

the magic gleam of instruments.

And from descending all day long10

into the microscope’s dark well

you did not hinder me at all.

O languorous Calliope,

the bane of uncompleted verse.

Instead, there was a new distraction:

something in my memory flashing,

as if unfocussed, and then clearer,

only to vanish once again.

Then I became abruptly bored5

by work with needle and with screw,

observing the shimmer in the pattern,

of monotonous infusoria,

unraveling the bowels of a grass snake.

No longer did the lab seem heaven;10

I started to imagine how, at the vicar’s,

she and I would meet once more.

There! Now it’s in focus. Now I see clearly.

It’s there, the satiny-chestnut iridescent glimmer

of her coiffure, those somewhat crudely

penciled lips; those lips like bright-red wax

with minute fissures. Eyes half-closed5

against the smoke, she finishes her cigarette

and, narrowing them, into the ashtray

the golden filter pokes . .. Soon the smoke will scatter,

her lashes will begin to flutter,

her sparkling eyes will glance intensely.10

[ll be the first to lower my gaze.

Her name was not very becoming

(especially the British ‘Violet’

to us was not pronounceable).

Quite unlike the flower, her eyes

blazed to the point of ugliness,5

and on everything, with joy, intensely,

her humid gaze would long stay fixed,

her pupils curiously dilated...

Her speech, however, light and rapid,

was not consistent with her gaze,10

and I myself could not decide

which I should trust — the vacuous chatter

or the grandiloquence of those eyes...

I knew, though, that her fullest blossom

Violet had achieved that year,

for how could she, a British girl,

enjoy her new-found liberty?

But three scant years remained5

and she’d be thirty, all of thirty ...

All those routine infatuations

And all had come and gone like shadows —

Jim, the soccer star, had vanished,

And Joe, the pensive one, and John,10

of calculus the gloomy hero...

She flirted and procrastinated,

toyed superficially with love,

but in her heart awaited more.

Inevitably comes the day;

He’s leaving, the ethereal friend:

the bill is paid, exams are done with,

the tennis racket in its frame,

and now the shiny locks click shut5

on the suitcase filled to bursting.

He’s leaving. From the anteroom

the luggage is brought out.

Some final clatter and the car moves off.

She gazes out into the dust:10

oh, well - so be it. Once again

the phantom of the bridal veil

had in her dreams appeared in vain...

An empty alley, and, far off,

The grinding of the shifting gears...15

From despicable influenza,

her father, a respected judge,

on Port an expert, and a joker,

had died not long ago, and

Violet resided with her aunt.5

This lady was of the kind

of learned booby that abounds in England —

unlike her brother, thin and haughty,

she always used a walking stick,

she delivered lectures to the workers,10

she revered culture’s ideal

and considered — inter al. -

Kharkov a Russian general.

With her, Violet did not argue -

at times she might, but felt lethargic —

she lived in beneficial quiet,

she was ill versed in worldly matters,

recalling ever less her father,5

her mother she’d forget (while I

by albums was informed about her —

about the times of wasp-waist dresses,

of horizontal boater hats.

The final snapshot: on a bench10

she sat, and, down her lengthy skirt,

the shadows flowed onto the sand,

her necklet modest, pure her gaze,

a croquet mallet in her hand).

I was invited twice or thrice

to their hospitable house,

and at the theatre quite by chance,

Violet turned up next to me

(the students were performing Hamlet5

and heaven was out of joint for

the bard’s illustrious shade).

More often we would meet

in the vociferous evening street

when the horde of vendors seethes,10

gutturally the news intoning.

That’s the hour when she would walk.

Two words, a superficial joke,

the splendor of those somber eyes.

And then, one time — I recall clearly -,

in early March, in rainy weather,

it happened that the two of us

went to a soccer game together.

And, gradually, the crowd increased;5

someone would crush my foot

or shove my shoulder; ever tighter

grew the many-headed roiling.

I entered into an unspoken resolution;

as soon as one goal shook the stands,10

I would caress my Violet’s hand.

Meanwhile in athletic shorts,

and in their motley jerseys clad,

the opposing players advanced.

Your average fan: under his cap

a squeamish lip and a strong whiff

of Virginia smoke. But now,

his lips unclench, his pipe’s withdrawn;

another minute, mouth’s agape;5

another and he is howling. Hands

by the hundreds victory inciting:

an artful player propels the ball,

darts like a swallow the field’s full length,

two men rush him, he swerves, he breaks through —10

neat piece of work — and, on the run,

nets the tanned ball from afar

with a shot from his well-practiced toe.

I cautiously my hand extended

with faith in my internal pounding

that was repeating to me, ‘touch...’

I touched. I was preparing even

to lean across, to whisper . . . She, though,5

her tepid, unresponsive hand

disengaged without a word;

only then rang out her mirthful,

habitual voice, her merry laugh:

‘Look — he plays worse than all the rest,10

keeps falling all the time, poor chap...’

It was drizzling just a bit;

we were returning by the gully

where the black foliage decayed.

Home. Its pediments adorned

by coats of arms, the massive hall,

green glimpses of internal courts.

Silence reigned there. There, in the somber

dining hall (described above)5

dwelt a staff of wizened waiters.

A sharp-eyed porter watched the gates.

There existed for the cleaning

of the obscure student lairs,

ever since immemorial times,10

a diminutive breed of crones;

one of them would call on me

to brush the dust atop the dresser

and the shelves upon the wall.

And to forsake this final image

is hard for me. My memory

conserves her mouselike little steps,

her comical, funereal cap —

such as the one that was, perhaps,5

worn by her grandma — the fine hairs

along her chin .. . Each morning, early,

amid the yellow-tinted fog,

without a sound, all dressed in black,

she would arrive, bringing the kindling,10

and, like a rag doll, stoop in front

of the gelid morning hearth.

She’ll spread the coke with practiced hand 2,

and, from below, scratch up a flame.

And this image is so troubling,

so bothersome to me... Perhaps,

in her dad’s tobacco shop,

back in Queen Victoria’s day,

her rosy girlishness had troubled5

the hearts enclosed in checkered waistcoats —

the hearts of lanky students...

When there resounds in darkened elms,

the nightingale’s sweet sound,

she would encounter one like me,10

who with this spirited young girl

would snap the Persian lilac branches;

and to her bared and tilted neck

his impassioned lips would press.

Imagination rushes onward:

night, bedside table, lamp . . . sleep comes not

to the sick old man .. . immobile,

he hearkens to the nighttime whisper:

an experiment of vital import5

has started in the lab... no strength left...

She comes when classes are to start,

She gathers up last midnight’s clutter —

burnt cigarettes, a rusted pen nib;

she’ll bring a pail out from the bedroom.10

The professor’s old. The time approaches

when he will die; he’s long forgotten

the fragrance of tobaccos that

he smoked in Queen Victoria’s days.

She’s gone. Soundlessly the door has closed . . .

the blazing coals. Evening. Ennui...

and, deafened by the silence, I,

with my cake in raisins’ birthmarks,

drink tea with gloomy far niente.5

In the hearth, all tame and tender,

the fire’s erect on its hind paws,

and the heat’s rough-textured odor

of faded furniture is more intense

within my ancient little room.10

To dig out with the red hot poker

concavities in hissing walls,

to play a solitary game of checkers,

to read, to write — what should I do?

Setting aside the dock-tailed teapot,

I take my faithful dictionary -

and with my muse, that wilted lady,

read in oppressive lassitude,

and locate in the final volume,5

between ‘free-loader’ and ‘hypocrite’,

‘despondence: melancholy, dejection, ennui;

spleen, hypochondria’.

and yet I will compose my poem...

Thus, for an hour or two, facing the fire,10

I sit, I fit together rhymes,

- having forgotten Violet —

and lo, like music from the heavens,

there peals the modulation of evening bells.

With opened window, to the bells

I hearken: for the night, the earth

is crossed by sacred quarter-notes,

on the far tower the hours resound,

the tower keeps count and then, more mournful,5

another from afar responds.

Upon the buildings growing weighty,

the mantle of silence casts its folds. I hearken —

all has grown still. And my soul

to the stillness grows accustomed —10

when suddenly, with thunderous guffaw,

swells up a motorcycle’s gale

along the lifeless alleyways!

Since then my soul has lived more amply:

I understood in those years but a sampling

of earthly noises to the Lord is equal;

in that townlet in the towers’ shadow

the sound of life was reckless clatter,5

the mixture of tipsy antiquity

and of the present liveliness

were healthful for me: my soul’s ready

to relish everything beneath the moon,

the ancient and the new.10

But I am in disaccord with the moon’s glow,

I try to avoid melancholy...

Oh keep me, Lord, from being a poet,

the earthly foolishly to miss!

No! I, with book and sleepy armchair

before a fireplace aglow,

did not let by, in useless sadness,

the charming entrance of the springtime.

I’ve had enough of coals and logs5

stuck in the fireplace — till October.

Now the heavens are opened wide,

here, now, is the first lustrous crocus

that, like a mushroom, pierces grass,

and tomorrow, without copious tears,10

without a lusty refrain,

she’ll come and make herself at home —

a perfectly well-mannered girl,

quite unlike the Russian spring.

And now it’s here. More limpid, higher

the chimes resound, and in his niche

the stony bishop leases out apartments

to the swallows. The hollow

honking in the alley’s arch resounds5

as sundry vehicles scuttle to and fro.

The fountain chirps, the barrier blooms.

Lawn tennis — that white pastime — replaces

boisterous soccer: in flannel trousers, the whole world

is off to play. Just then, the final10

course was ending — the ultimate impasse,

and with Violet I would meet

and my Violet I would kiss.

Like the first time, she shied away

in my embrace — seemed horrified,

propped arms against my shoulders,

and how insane and mournful

looked her eyes! And this was neither5

in amazement nor in anger,

nor was it stylized girlish fright . . .

I failed to understand ... I do

recall the evenly and modishly

shorn garden, six white balls,10

a row of massive rhododendron bushes;

a fiery player, I recollect

a court of firm-packed greensward, lined

with white and traversed by a net.

Her game was lazy — therefore, bad —

she played; she did not fly, chamois-like,

with the fleet foot of Lenglen.

Oh, I confess, my friends, I love

the stroke resilient at full tilt,5

the goddess in a knee-length dress!

To toss the ball, to arch my back,

unwind like lightning,

with the stringed surface, from the shoulder

to skim the ball’s occiput,10

and, lunging, the whistling return

to devastatingly cut short —

the world has not a sweeter pastime...

in heaven we shall be playing ball.

A house of bricks stood by the stream:

ivy and the usual wisteria

entwined the wall betwixt the windows.

But, other than the plushy parlor,

where I remember three tableaux —5

one of Mary by the Cross,

another, a huntsman in a red frock coat,

the third a group of sleeping dogs —

I saw none of the other rooms.

The fireplace, the bronze candlestick,10

I guess I should also mention,

the pianola, too, beneath its cover,

and inadvertent feet that meshed

under the dainty teatime table.

She grew submissive very quickly ...

For my part, I felt no reproach

in her obedience. The spring

changed imperceptibly to summer.

Through fields with Violet I amble:5

sometimes the depths of a black cloud

would be encrimsoned by a sunset —

for Russia I so strongly yearned,

a nauseating heat would scald my soul,

especially when a mosquito10

would whine above my ear in silent

evening hours, and my chest aches

from the aroma of bird cherry.

Enough, I will return one day.

Upon such days, with such-like sloth

who wants to study? And yet, alas,

exams impend, like it or not.

I guess we’ll have to work a little...

The book, however, seems stale bread,5

it’s dry, it’s stiff, I can’t bite through.

We’ve overcome much more than that ..

And now I spin in bacchanalias

of terms and systems’ orgies,

and I remember midst all that10

what a boat my friendly boatman

had promised me the previous day -

and all the unfinished volumes

slam shut and on their shelf. It’s time!

Toward the festive, teeming river,

here and there the emerald sliver

of a geometric lawn descends,

or overhead an archway bends:

the waterway beneath is narrow5

darkness, mold: into the turbid water

from both sides the Gothic walls ingrown.

Like otherworldly gobelins

the chestnuts bloom above the bridge,

and ivy on the centuries-old stone10

crowds its ace-of-spades designs

and, further, like a narrow stripe,

the river winds past walls and towers

with a Venetian idleness.

There were the floats, pirogues, canoes;

yonder a gramophone, nearby

a vivid parasol, and petals

into the green-tinted water falling.

Love, drowsiness, the human crowd,5

and through the antiquated bridges,

traversing the coolness of their ovals,

like some dream, both glossy and fatigued,

all of this slowly trickles past,

and iridesces, till, abducted10

by a recondite meander —

into a dense backwater of bird cherry

without reflection, without sound,

two beings ’neath an alder float.

Some wine, cold cutlets and some cushions,

Violet’s patter, her softly breathing languorous breast,

encircled by a silken shawl;

her face, untouched by rouge,

was flaming. The pink chestnut tree5

bloomed high above the alder forest.

The breeze was playing with the rushes,

rummaged through the boat, barely ruffled

a humorous review;

then on her palpitating neck10

and the dimple of her clavicle

I kissed her, laughing.

I look: upon the colorful cushion

she pensively reclines.

She turns a page of the review,

and seemingly her gaze has stopped.

But that gaze was wearisome and dusky:

She did not see the printed page . . .

Abruptly, from beneath a throbbing eyelash,5

emerged as from a chrysalis a bright ray

and down her ruddy-swarthy cheek,

glistening, a round diamond rolled...

‘What is it, what,

please tell me?’ Her shoulder10

shrugged and heedlessly she wiped

the gleaming of that speechless tear,

with soundless laughter her throat swelled:

‘I myself don’t know, my dear one...”

The time ticked on. The sunset fog

descended. Far in the distance, indistinctly

in a pasture a horn sang. The world assumed

a crepuscular and misty cast. And in the colored lamellate

small lantern5

I light a candle, and quietly we sail

into the mist — was it not you,

Ophelia, or was it just the needle of a gramophone?

Within the mist an indefinable sound draws ever closer,

And, splashing a bit,10

the shadow of a boat moves past,

a droplet of the flame glows red.

And perhaps it is not Violet -

But another, and in a different summer,

who on another night floats by my side...

you’re here, and there was no parting,

you’re here, and with extended hands5

in the vague nocturnal silence,

you are in love with me again,

with you, amid the mirage riparian,

my happiness at last I’ve reached,

thank heaven, though, that very instant,10

the rush of forbidden reverie

the sound of British speech cuts off:

‘There’s the landing, sweetheart, careful.’

I backed the oars and touched the shore.

There on the bench we sat a while...

‘Oh, my Violet, don’t tell me

that it’s bedtime for you?’

And sparkling with her enlarged eyes,

she answers me: ‘Judge for yourself, —5

it’s eleven o’clock,’ — and, rising,

she offers me a last embrace.

And she adjusts her hairdo.

‘Tll walk the final bit alone.

So long.’ She’s chilly once again,10

and baleful, upset by something, —

hard to make out... ’m happy, though...

Lightly I am wafted by

the rapture of nocturnal being.

Homeward I walked, inebriated

in the tight embrace of charming alleys —

and my soul was so chock-full

and such a paucity of words!

Around — a dearth of sounds, of beings,5

and, one would presume, a moon,

and spots of light on the smooth pavement,

that with my rubber heel I’d squash —

I walked and sang ‘Alla verdy’,

not sensing my approaching doom...10

Ominously, gloomily,

from underneath an unseen gate,

suddenly there loomed the figures

of three most unseemly chaps.

Their chieftain — our most dogged mentor:

deportment, cape and the black

square (kerchief) covering his head —-

his whole mien — severe reproach.

Two toughs — his faithful bulldogs —5

stood flanking him and watching me.

They resembled two detectives,

but also two torch-bearing linkmen:

stocky, jowly, dressed in tailcoats

and top hats. And in the dim light10

their quarry turned to flight.

The dark would hardly mean salvation.

Such fierce endurance they conceal and speed.

I stealthily the fiend evaded ...

Alas, I was attired for sport,

while nighttime dress demanded, here

(see such-and-such clause of the rules),

that caps be worn. Another minute5

all three of them would close on me,

the middle one’s gaze would meet my gaze,

he’d ask my name, then write it down, —

as he pronounced a civil ‘thank you’;

and tomorrow there would be a reprimand and fine.10

I froze. A whitish light was falling

on their indifferent features.

They moved in closer .. . and here I took,

as they say, to my heels.

The moon... The chase... The mad nightmare...

I run, I shun in silence:

then, either a top-hatted phantom

lunges or darkness threatens with its cloak,

or something like a hand5

in a black glove .. . miss me, miss me...

and all is overwhelmed by moonlight,

all is distorted ...

with a hurried jump

I ended my inglorious flight,10

crawled into my college courtyard,

where no gliding angel passes,

and no wily demon.

P’ve become winded ... My heart’s beating...

The night oppresses me, listlessly flowing .. .

Into the coolness of my sheets

Islip when it’s already dawning,

and in my dream I see you, Violet,5

I hear you ask, ‘Throw the cloak on...

No, no, not that one — it’s too narrow...’

I dream that we converse in Russian,

and, in the dream, it’s the familiar

form that we speak in, and I dream10

you’ve brought some wood chips...

You break them, put them in the hearth...

Creep up, creep up, reluctant flamelet,

or will you disappear in smoke?

I got up late, slept through my classes...

The little crone cleaned my clothes —

the buttons knocked beneath her brush.

I dressed, and had a little smoke,

yawned to the Unicorn for lunch.5

And suddenly there’s Johnson at the door!

We had not met for half a year —

since he had taken his exam —

‘Hello! I never thought I'd see you.’

‘Tt’s not for long, on Saturday I’m off,10

I only need to grab some junk —

my last assignments to submit

where the local sages sit.’

We took a table. Appetizers,

small talk — a Russian’s craving for caviar,

followed by the trout’s blue curve, and talk

about who was now tennis champ,

then a rather silly argument5

about the strike, and an airy cake.

Whereupon, having finished off

a bottle of amiable Graves,

then on the seductive Asti

we assiduously went to work —10

about the emptiness of heart-throbs

vacuous discussions followed.

‘_Love...’ —and he gave a prolonged sigh:

‘I loved once, too... Whom - it’s no matter;

as soon as springtime dwindled,

I noticed that something was wrong;

my imagination cooled5

and I lost my warmth toward her.’

He gave my glass a mournful clink

then he went on: ‘It was awful...

you lean close to her, for instance,

and your wandering eye like Gulliver’s10

will see the giant furrows and the bumps

on what was once attractive to you,

and what you find repulsive since.’

Then he fell silent. We went out

together from the club. To be sincere,

I was a little high,

and felt like going home. The sun was hot.

Trees sparkled. Silently we paced,5

When suddenly my gloomy partner —

on Holy Ghost Street —

squeezing my elbow, dryly uttered:

‘T was just telling you ... and look,

as chance would have it, here she is...’10

and there was Violet, coming toward us,

gorgeous, happy, in a stream of sunlight.

She smiled at us, and off she went.

With a strange sense of irritation,

no longer tipsy, salutations

were exchanged with my chance partner,

I squandered a few hours, and — basta —

went to work — as I had seldom5

worked, whole days, with bristling hair, I’d sink

into my studies, and not think

of leaving Violet, till, at last

(just like an oarsman straining with

approaching finish line in sight),10

I crammed with textbooks through the night,

with ice against my brow pressed tight.

And it began. Exams went on

for five hot days. The torrid

sun so oppressively heated the hall

that someone fainted, and my neighbor

on the right a fit of sleeping sickness feigned5

to conceal a failing mark.

And so it ended. Alma Mater

bestowed on each survivor’s

brow a parting peck;

I gathered books and microscope, —10

and suddenly I thought of Violet,

and that was when I thought with wonder

how the mysterious sequence

of centuries divided us.

And I, a liberated idler now,

with my free and hungry soul

went soaring off to other shores,

to a familiar port, where in an office

the indifferent sea recruits5

simple hoboes such as me.

I have already squandered all my riches:

the well-known abbey’s portrait

in two copies is all I have left.

And on the final night,10

upon our lawn, amid

a Venetian court’s habitual ball,

we undulated until dawn.

A gallery surrounds the court.

In the blue murk blushing pink,

garlands of lanterns glow -

Aeolus’s airy swings.

Now the musicians join the fray,5

five furiously moving shades

in a crimson shell of light.

And yet, amid all this, where’s Violet?

I see her suddenly, standing

illumined by a lantern’s glow,10

between two columns, as on a stage,

something was drawing to a close...

Perhaps this dress with its black spangles

was not becoming to her?

Unperturbed by contact with her,

I cling to her as we start dancing;

she’s silent and severe of bearing,

her immobile face asparkle.

And her resilient leg responds5

to the pressure of my leg.

Obedient to the banging and the wailing,

the couples tread upon the lawn,

serpentines from every side,

and then the sax carries the tune,10

now the drumsticks, then the rattles,

the exclamations of the cymbals,

first a long step, then a short one,

and night marvels at the ball.

A living soul yields not to fashion,

but, now and then, for freedom, passion

will coincide with its dictates .. .

I like the fox trot, forthright, gentle .. .

Some philosophizer, surely,5

will find in it our epoch’s symptoms,

debauchery to bedlam’s music;

some literary lady or

dime-a-dozen poetaster

will bemoan the dances of the past;10

but for my part, I'll say frankly,

I find no special charm at the sight of a boorish and

unwashed

marquess dancing a minuet.

The band dies down. Beneath a colonnade

we walk...

Between one swallow and another

of lemonade she pattered then we sat down on the steps.

I look and see our comic shadows.5

Our shadows touch: ‘I’m off tomorrow, Violet.’

And uttering this was so simple...

Raising an eyebrow, she smiled at me...

a limpid smile: ‘After a ball

it’s easy to oversleep all trains.’10

And the music moaned anew,

and we were dancing once again.

Oh cease, oh cease, my farewell ball!

While the festive wind lets drop

the colored ribbons on the sward and orange peels —

somewhere in her den

my little crone must be asleep — her sleep is peaceful.5

Dapples of moonlight cling to her, her

dress lies like a black smudge on the chair,

her cap is like a black smudge on its hook;

the alarm clock with a sparkle ’neath its dome

assiduously ticks; under the cupboard a mouse10

shuffles, darts away, and, in the stillness,

midst a serene snoring the pauper’s night expires.

My little crone, at midday exactly,

will see me off. Lovingly, I screwed my racket

into its frame, knelt on my suitcase, snapped it shut.

Along the corners and the walls I let my soul and my gaze

Yes, it’s all packed .. . Farewell, my lair!5

My little crone is at the door...

The thunderous motor’s rumble — the wheels move off...

Oh well, another one is gone... A fresh one

will move in, come October — and the talk

will be the same, with the same rubbish on the rug.10

And that is all. Farewell, dear sounds,

farewell, fair muse.

Before our parting I ask only one thing:

as you fly, swallowlike, now lower,

now on high, find one plain word within this world,5

always swift to understand you,

where moth and rust do not corrupt,

cherishing each instant,

blessing each motion,

do not allow it to freeze still,10

perceive the delicate rotation

of the slightly tilted earth.

... From afar you can discern the swallowtail

from its sunny, tropic beauty:

along a grassy slope it dashes

and settles on a roadside dandelion.

My net swings, the muslin loudly rustles.5

O, yellow demon, how you quiver!

I am afraid to tear its dentate little fringes

and its black, supremely slender tails.

Also, on occasion in the oriole-filled park,

some lucky midday, hot and windy,10

I'd stand, ecstatic at the fragrance,

before a tall and fluffy lilac,

almost crimson in comparison

with the deep blue of the sky,

and, dangling from a cluster, palpitating,15

the swallowtail, a gold-winged guest, grew tipsy,

while, blindingly, the wind was swaying

both butterfly and luscious cluster.

You aim, but the branches interfere;

you swing — but with a flash it vanishes,20

and from the net turned inside out

tumble only severed crests of flowers.

A picture in a school anthology:

an old man, barefoot. As I turned the page,

unkindled still was my imagination.

With Pushkin things are different: there’s the cloak,

the cliff, the foaming surf... The surname ‘Pushkin’5

grows over, ivylike, with poetry,

and repetitiously the muse cites names

that echo noisily around him: Delvig,

Danzas, d’Anthés — and his whole life has a

romantic ring, from school-day Delia to10

the pistol shot, that chill day of the duel.

The radiance of legend has as yet

not touched Tolstoy. His life does not arouse

a feeling of excitement. Names of people

connected with him still do not sound ripe:15

with time they’ll gain mysterious distinction;

that time has not yet come: my naming Chertkov

would just mean narrowing the poem’s horizon.

One should say, too, that people’s memory

must lose material contact with the past20

in order to make gossip into epic

and to transmute the muteness into music,

while we are still unable to renounce

too-flattering proximity to him

in time. It’s likely our grandchildren will25

regard us with unreasonable envy.

Insidious technology sometimes

can bolster memory artificially.

A phonograph recording still preserves

the cadence of his voice: he reads aloud,30

monotonously, hastily, opaquely,

and stumbling when he comes to the word ‘God’,

repeating ‘God’, and then continuing —

a slightly husky, almost senseless sound,

like someone coughing in the next compartment35

when, in the old days, at a nighttime station,

your railroad car would make a sighing stop.

In an archive of ancient films, they say

(which blink, these days, as though with dimming vision)

there is a Yasnaya Polyana sequence;40

a nondescript old man of modest stature,

his beard disheveled by the wind, who walks

by with accelerated little steps,

disgruntled by the cameraman. And we’re

content. He’s close and comprehensible.45

We’ve visited with him, we’ve sat together.

There’s nothing awesome in this genius speaking

of matrimony or of peasant schools...

And, with a feeling that he is our equal,

with whom it is all right to argue some,50

addressing him by name and patronymic,

we smile with deference and discuss together

his views on this or that ... The windbags buzz

around the evening samovar; upon

a spotless tablecloth flit shadows of55

religions, of philosophies, of states —

the humble soul’s delight .. .

Yet there remains

one thing we simply cannot reconstruct,

no matter how we poke, armed with our notepads,60

just like reporters at a fire, around

his soul. It’s to a certain secret throbbing —

the essence — that our access is denied.

The mystery is almost superhuman!

I mean the nights on which Tolstoy composed;65

I mean the miracle, the hurricane

of images flying across the inky

expanse of sky in that hour of creation,

that hour of incarnation . . . For, the people

born on those nights were real .. . That’s how the Lord70

transmits to his elected his primeval,

his beatific license to create

his worlds, and instantly to breathe into

the new-made flesh a one-and-only spirit.

And here they are, alive; all, in them, lives —75

their habits, their locutions, and their mores:

their homeland is that special kind of Russia

we carry in the depths where there exists

a blurry dream of signs ineffable:

a Russia of smells, of nuances, of sounds,80

of giant clouds above at haying time,

a Russia of fascinating swamplands, where

wild game abounds .. . Those are the things we love.

The people he created, thousands of them,

transpire incredibly through our own life,85

lend color to the distance of recall —

as though we actually lived beside them.

On various occasions, midst the crowd,

to note Karenina’s black curls we’ve chanced,

and with little Shcherbatskaya we’ve danced90

her vainly saved mazurka at the ball...

I feel that rhymes, like blooms, within me stir:

the wing’s invisible, I heed its call...

I know that death is just a kind of border;

yet I see death as a specific image:95

the final page’s text is now in order,

the lamp extinguished o’er the desk. The vision

keeps shimmering, prolonged by its reflection,

then, suddenly, unthinkably, it ends .. .

And he is gone, meticulous creator100

who into lucid voices separated

the din of being, a din he understood. . .

One day, from a chance railroad station, he

turned off toward the unknown and left for good;

beyond lies night, silence, and mystery .. .105

I have no need, for my nocturnal travels,

of ships, I have no need of trains.

The moon’s above the checkerboard-like garden.

The window’s open. I am set.

And with habitual silence — like a tomcat,5

at night over a fence — across

the border streamlet, passportless, my shadow

leaps to the other, Russian, bank.

Mysterious, invulnerable, weightless,

I glide across successive walls,10

and at the moonlight, the dream rushing past him,

the border guard takes aim in vain.

I fly across the meadows, dance through forests —

and who will know that there exists

in this vast country but a single living,15

a single happy citizen.

Along the lengthy quay the Neva shimmers.

All’s still. A tardy passer-by

my shadow in a lonely square encounters

and curses his own fantasy.20

Now I approach an unfamiliar building,

the place alone I recognize...

There, in the darkened rooms, everything’s altered,

and everything upsets my shade.

There, children sleep. Above the pillow’s corner25

I stoop, and they begin to dream

about the toys that, long ago, I played with,

about my ships, about my trains.

Resplendent fruit, so weighty and so glossy,

exactly like a full-blown moon you shine;

hermetic vessel of unsweet ambrosia

and aromatic coolness of white wine.

The lemon is the pride of Syracuse,5

Mignon yields to the orange’s delights,

but you alone are fit to quench the Muse

when, thirsty, she has come down from her heights.

Long and hazy the evening,

and I stand, as in prayer,

a young entomologist,

with some honeysuckle near.

How I crave, unexpected,5

Midst those flowers to glimpse,

With proboscis projected,

a heavenly sphinx!

A quick throb — and I see it.

At an angel I hit,10

and a demon’s entangled

in the haze of my net.

Forty-three years, forty-four years maybe,

had elapsed since I recalled you last:

then, with neither reason nor transition,

there you were, dream caller from the past,

I, to whom is, nowadays, repugnant5

every detail of that bygone life,

felt that some insinuating, willful

bawd had prearranged a tryst with you.

But, although the same guitar you fingered,

sang again ‘I was a newlywed...”10

you weren’t here to rend me with old anguish,

only to announce that you were dead.

To the steppes, they will drive them, O Harlequins mine,

through ravines, to the realms of strange hetmans!

Their geometry and their Venetian design

they will call but eccentric deception.

You alone, you alone, as they passed, were agog5

at the black, blue, and orange-hued rhombi...

‘An unusual writer, N. — athlete and snob,

and endowed with enormous aplomb, he . .’

The rain has flown and burnt up in flight.

I tread the red sand of a path.

Golden orioles whistle, the rowan is in bloom,

the catkins on sallows are white.

The air is refreshing, humid and sweet.5

How good the caprifole smells!

Downward a leaf inclines its tip

and drops from its tip a pearl.

Slowly you wander through the sleepless streets.

From your sad brow gone is the former ray,

that called us toward love and shining heights.

Your trembling hand holds an extinguished taper.

Dragging your broken wing over dead men,5

your bloodstained elbow covering your eyes,

once more deceived, you once again depart,

and the old night, alas, remains behind.

I still keep mute — and in the hush grow strong.

The far-off crests of future works, amidst

the shadows of my soul are still concealed

like mountaintops in pre-auroral mist.

I greet you, my inevitable day!5

The skyline’s width, variety and light

increase; and on the first, resounding step

I go up, filled with terror and delight.

Not quite a bed, not quite a bench.

Wallpaper: a grim yellow.

A pair of chairs. A squinty looking-glass.

We enter — my shadow and I.

We open with a vibrant sound the window:5

the light’s reflection slides down to the ground.

The night is breathless. Distant dogs

with varied barks fracture the stillness.

Stirless, I stand there at the window,

and in the black bowl of the sky10

glows like a golden drop of honey

the mellow moon.

I wander aimlessly from lane to lane,

bending a careful ear to ancient times:

the same cicadas sang in Caesar’s reign,

upon the walls the same sun clings and climbs.

The plane tree sings: with light its trunk is pied;5

the little shop sings: delicately tings

the bead-stringed curtain that you push aside —

and, pulling on his thread, the tailor sings.

And at a fountain with a rounded rim,

rinsing blue linen, sings a village girl,10

and mottle shadows of the plane tree swim

over the stone, the wickerwork, and her.

What bliss it is, in this world full of song,

to brush against the chalk of walls, what bliss

to be a Russian poet lost among15

cicadas trilling with a Latin lisp!

The English burned her, burned my girl,

burned her in Rouen’s market square.

The deathsman sold me a black coat of mail,

a beaked helmet and a dead spear.

You are here with me, iron saint,5

and the world has grown cold and stark:

slanting shadows, and winding stairs,

and the night’s velvet nailed with stars.

Above rusty traceries, my candle

flickers and drops wax on the straps.10

We, warriors, flew in your wake

and tinctured our days in your colors.

But when night lowered its vizor,

in silence you slipped out of masculine armor,

and white and weak you would burn15

in the embrace of your faithful knights.

As soon as my native land had receded

in the briny dark the northeaster struck,

like a sword of diamond revealing

among the clouds a chasm of stars.

My yearning ache, my recollections5

I swear to preserve with royal care

ever since I adopted the blazon of exile:

on a field of sable a starry sword.

Night falls. He has been executed.

From Golgotha the crowd descends and winds

between the olive trees, like a slow serpent;

and mothers watch as John downhill

into the mist, with urgent words, escorts5

gray, haggard Mary.

To bed he’ll help her, and lie down himself,

and through his slumber hear till morning

her tossings and her sobs.

What if her son had stayed at home with her,10

and carpentered and sung? What if those tears

cost more than our redemption?

The Son of God will rise, in radiance orbed;

on the third day a vision at the tomb

will meet the wives who bought the useless myrrh;15

Thomas will feel the luminescent flesh;

the wind of miracles will drive men mad,

and many will be crucified.

Mary, what are to you the fantasies

of fishermen? Over your grief days skim20

insensibly, and neither on the third

nor hundredth, never will he heed your call

and rise, your brown firstborn who baked mud sparrows

in the hot sun, at Nazareth.

I like that mountain in its black pelisse

of fir forests — because

in the gloom of a strange mountain country

I am closer to home.

How should I not know those dense needles,5

and how should I not lose my mind

at the mere sight of that peatbog berry

showing blue along my way?

The higher the dark and damp

trails twist upward, the clearer10

grow the tokens, treasured since childhood,

of my northern plain.

Shall we not climb thus

the slopes of paradise, at the hour of death,

meeting all the loved things15

that in life elevated us?

To my alarm clock its lesson I set

for next morning, and into the darkness

I release my bedroom like a balloon,

and step into sleep with relief.

Then, in sleep itself, I’m possessed by a sort5

of subordinate drowsiness. Dimly

I see a round table. I cannot make out

those sitting at it. We’re all waiting for somebody.

One of the guests has a pocket flashlight

that he trains on the door, like a pistol;10

and higher in stature, and brighter in face

a dead friend of mine enters, laughing.

Without any astonishment I talk to him,

now alive, and I feel there is no deception.

The once mortal wound has gone from his brow15

as if it had been some light make-up.

We talk, I feel gay. Then, suddenly,

there’s a falter, an odd embarrassment.

My friend leads me aside

and whispers something in explanation.20

But I do not hear. A long-ringing bell

summons to the performance:

the alarm clock repeats its lesson

and daylight breaks through my eyelids.

Looking, just for one moment, of the wrong shape,25

the world lands catlike, on all

its four feet at once, and now stands

familiar both to the mind and the eye.

But, good Lord — when by chance the dream is recalled

during the day, in somebody’s drawing room,30

or when in a flash it comes back to one

in front of a gunsmith’s window —

how grateful one is to unearthly powers

that the dead can appear in one’s sleep,

how proud of the dream, of that nighttime event,35

is one’s shaken soul!

Upon the beach at violet-blue noon,

in a vacational Elysium

a striped bather took

a picture of his happy family.

And very still stood his small naked boy,5

and his wife smiled,

in ardent light, in sandy bliss

plunged as in silver.

And by the striped man

directed at the sunny sand10

blinked with a click of its black eyelid

the camera’s ocellus.

That bit of film imprinted

all it could catch,

the stirless child,15

his radiant mother,

and a toy pail and two beach spades,

and some way off a bank of sand,

and I, the accidental spy,

I in the background have been also taken.20

Next winter, in an unknown house,

grandmother will be shown an album,

and in that album there will be a snapshot

and in that snapshot I shall be.

My likeness among strangers,25

one of my August days,

my shade they never noticed,

my shade they stole in vain.

My soul, beyond distant death

your image I see like this:

a provincial naturalist,

an eccentric lost in paradise.

There, in a glade, a wild angel slumbers,5

a semi-pavonian creature.

Poke at it curiously

with your green umbrella,

speculating how, first of all,

you will write a paper on it,10

then — — But there are no learned journals,

nor any readers in paradise!

And there you stand, not yet believing

your wordless woe.

About that blue somnolent animal15

whom will you tell, whom?

Where is the world and the labeled roses,

the museum and the stuffed birds?

And you look and look through your tears

at those unnamable wings.20

On certain nights as soon as I lie down

my bed starts drifting into Russia,

and presently I’m led to a ravine,

to a ravine led to be killed.

I wake — and in the darkness, from a chair5

where watch and matches lie,

into my eyes, like a gun’s steadfast muzzle,

the glowing dial stares.

With both hands shielding breast and neck —

now any instant it will blast! —10

I dare not turn my gaze away

from that disk of dull fire.

The watch’s ticking comes in contact

with frozen consciousness;

the fortunate protection15

of my exile I repossess.

But how you would have wished, my heart,

that thus it all had really been:

Russia, the stars, the night of execution

and full of racemosas the ravine!20

For happiness the lover cannot sleep;

the clock ticktacks; the gray-haired merchant fancies

in vermeil skies a silhouetted crane,

into a hold its cargo slowly sinking.

To gloomy exiles there appears miraged5

a mist, which youth with its own hue has tinted.

Amidst the agitation and the beauty

of daily life, one image everywhere

haunts me incessantly, torments and claims me:

Upon the bright-lit island of the desk10

the somber facets of the open inkstand

and the white sheet of paper, and the lamp’s

unswitched-off light beneath its green glass dome.

And left athwart the still half-empty page,

my pen like a black arrow, and the word15

I did not finish writing.

I died. The sycamores and shutters

along the dusty street were teased

by torrid Aeolus.

I walked,

and fauns walked, and in every faun5

god Pan I seemed to recognize:

Good. I must be in Paradise.

Shielding her face and to the sparkling sun

showing a russet armpit, in a doorway

there stood a naked little girl.10

She had a water lily in her curls

and was as graceful as a woman. Tenderly

her nipples bloomed, and I recalled

the springtime of my life on earth,

when through the alders on the river brink15

so very closely I could watch

the miller’s youngest daughter as she stepped

out of the water, and she was all golden,

with a wet fleece between her legs.

And now, still wearing the same dress coat20

that I had on when killed last night,

with a rake’s predatory twinkle,

toward my Lilith I advanced.

She turned upon me a green eye

over her shoulder, and my clothes25

were set on fire and in a trice

dispersed like ashes.

In the room behind

one glimpsed a shaggy Greek divan,

on a small table wine, pomegranates,30

and some lewd frescoes covering the wall.

With two cold fingers childishly

she took me by my emberhead:

‘now come along with me,’ she said.

Without inducement, without effort,35

Just with the slowness of pert glee,

like wings she gradually opened

her pretty knees in front of me.

And how enticing, and how merry,

her upturned face! And with a wild40

lunge of my loins I penetrated

into an unforgotten child.

Snake within snake, vessel in vessel,

smooth-fitting part, I moved in her,

through the ascending itch forefeeling45

unutterable pleasure stir.

But suddenly she lightly flinched,

retreated, drew her legs together,

and grasped a veil and twisted it

around herself up to the hips,50

and full of strength, at half the distance

to rapture, I was left with nothing.

I hurtled forward. A strange wind

caused me to stagger. ‘Let me in!’

I shouted, noticing with horror55

that I again stood outside in the dust

and that obscenely bleating youngsters

were staring at my pommeled lust.

“Let me come in!’ And the goat-hoofed,

copper-curled crowd increased. ‘Oh, let me in,’60

I pleaded, ‘otherwise I shall go mad!’

The door stayed silent, and for all to see

writhing with agony I spilled my seed

and knew abruptly that I was in Hell.

Your coming I recall: a growing vibrance,

an agitation to the world unknown.

The moon through branches touched the balcony

and there a shadow, lyriform, was thrown.

To me, a youth, the iamb seemed a garb5

too rude for the soft languor of your shoulders;

but my imperfect line had tunefulness

and with the red lips of its rhyme it smiled.

And I was happy. On the dimming desk

a trembling flame hollowed my bit of candle,10

and in my dream the page was under glass,

immortal, all zigzagged with my corrections.

Not so at present. For the morning star

my morning slumber I will not surrender.

Beyond my strength are multitudes of tasks —15

especially the worries of ambition.

I am expert, frugal, intolerant.

My polished verse cleaner than copper shines.

We talk occasionally, you and I,

across the fence like two old country neighbors.20

Yes, ripeness is pictorial, agreed:

leaf of grapevine, pear, watermelon halved,

and — top of artistry — transparent light.

I’m feeling cold. Ah, this is autumn, Muse!

When in some coastal townlet, on a night

of low clouds and ennui, you open

the window - from afar

whispering sounds spill over.

Now listen closely and discern5

the sound of seawaves breathing upon land,

protecting in the night

the soul that harkens unto them.

Daylong the murmur of the sea is muted,

but the unbidden day now passes10

(tinkling as does an empty

tumbler on a glass shelf);

and once again amidst the sleepless hush

open your window, wider, wider,

and with the sea you are alone15

in the enormous and calm world.

Not the sea’s sound .. . In the still night

I hear a different reverberation:

the soft sound of my native land,

her respiration and pulsation.20

Therein blend all the shades of voices

so dear, so quickly interrupted

and melodies of Pushkin’s verse

and sighs of a remembered pine wood.

Repose and happiness are there,25

a blessing upon exile;

yet the soft sound cannot be heard by day

drowned by the scurrying and rattling.

But in the compensating night,

in sleepless silence, one keeps listening30

to one’s own country, to her murmuring,

her deathless deep.

Oh, that sound! Across snow —

creak, creak, creak:

somebody walking in long boots of felt.

Stout, spirally twisted ice,

sharp points inverted, hangs from the eaves.5

The snow is crumpy and shiny.

(Oh, that sound!)

My hand sled behind me, far from dragging,

seems to run by itself: it knocks at my heels.

I settle upon it and coast10

down the steep, down the smooth:

felt boots straddled,

I hold on to the string.

Whenever I’m falling asleep,

I cannot help think:15

Maybe you will find a moment

to visit me,

my warmly muffled up, clumsy

childhood.

Humped up on the back of a chair,

a fingerless overcoat.

The darkening day was deceptive:

fancy has it all wrong.

A current of air has passed recently5

and one’s soul has been blown

into a flowingly opening

cipher of glass.

Filtered through light as reflected

by the vessels of numbers,10

bloated or flattened

in curved limbs of alembics,

my spirit was being transfigured

into thousands of rings,

which gyrated and multiplied15

and at last it all came to a stop,

in most crystal stagnation,

most excellent Nought;

and in my room just an empty

overcoat hunches its back.20

The poet dealing in Dejection

to Beauty iterates: adieu!

He says that human days are only

words on a page picked up by you

upon your way (a page ripped out —5

where from? You know not and reject it)

or from the night into the night

through a bright hall a brief bird’s flight.

Zoilus (a majestic rascal,

whom only lust of gain can stir)10

and Publicus, litterateur

(a nervous leaseholder of glory),

cower before me in dismay

because I’m wicked, cold, and gay,

because honor and life I weigh15

on Pushkin’s scales and dare prefer

honor...

In memory of V. D.N.

Inspiration, rosy sky,

black house, with a single window,

fiery. Oh, that sky

drunk up by the fiery window!5

Trash of solitary outskirts,

weedy little stalk with teardrop,

skull of happiness, long, slender,

like the skull of a borzoi.

What’s the matter with me? Self-lost,10

melting in the air and sunset,

muttering and almost fainting

on the waste at eveningtime.

Never did I want so much to cry.

Here it is, deep down in me.15

The desire to bring it forth intact,

slightly filmed with moisture and so tremulous,

never yet had been so strong in me.

Do come out, my precious being,

cling securely to a stem,20

to the window, still celestial,

or to the first lighted lamp.

Maybe empty is the world, and brutal;

nothing do I know — except

that it’s worthwhile being born25

for the sake of this your breath.

It once was easier and simpler:

two rhymes — and my notebook I’d open.

How hazily I got to know you

in my presumptuous youth!30

Leaning my elbows on the railing

of verse that glided like a bridge,

already I imagined that my soul

had started moving, started gliding,

and would keep drifting to the very stars.35

But when transcribed in a fair copy,

deprived of magic instantly,

how helplessly behind each other

the leaden-weighted words would hide!

My young loneliness40

in the night among motionless boughs!

The amazement of night over the river,

which reflects it in full;

and lilac bloom, the pale darling

of my first inexperienced numbers,45

with that fabulous moonlight upon it!

And the paths of the park in half-mourning,

and — enlarged at present by memory,

twice as solid and beautiful now,

the old house, and the deathless flame50

of the kerosene lamp in the window;

and in sleep the nearing of bliss,

a far breeze, an-aerial envoy

with increasing noise penetrating dense woods,

inclining a branch at last —55

all that time had seemed to have taken,

but you pause, and again it shines through,

for its lid was not tight — and no longer

can one take it away from you.

Blinking, a fiery eye looks,60

through the fingerlike black stacks

of a factory, at weedy flowers

and a deformed tin can.

Across the vacant lot in darkening dust

I glimpse a slender hound with snow-white coat.65

Lost, I presume. But in the distance sounds

insistently and tenderly a whistling.

And in the twilight toward me a man

comes, calls. I recognize

your energetic stride. You haven’t70

changed much since you died.

A street photographer in laic life,

now poet, king, Parnassian autocrat

(since quite a time kept under lock and key),

thus did he speak:

I did not wish to stoop5

to Fame: it rushed up of its own accord.

I’ve now forgotten where my Muse was schooled.

Straight, lonesome was her path. I never knew

how to stock friends for use, nor to pull thorns

from lion paws. It suddenly began10

to snow; surprising! It was snowing roses.

Enchanting destiny! How much I prize

an Enemy’s wan little smile! I like

to incommode the Failure, multiply

his painful dreams about me, and examine15

the skeleton of Envy, shadowgraphed

and showing through, if held up to the light.

When I with balladry blandish the moon

the trees beyond the gate grow agitated

as they endeavor out of turn to get20

into my verse. I’m privileged to rule

the entire world (which disobeys my Neighbor),

and happiness so airily dilates,

my head is filled with such an incandescence,

and words of such impeccable perfection25

come to meet Thought and wing away with her

that I dare not write down a single word.

Yet sometimes — Oh to be another! Quick!

Another! Tailor, carpenter — Or, say,

itinerant photographer: to live30

as in an old tale, work the villas, take

pictures of dappled children in a hammock,

and of their dog and shadows on the sand.

Kind of green, kind of gray, i.e.,

striated all over with rain,

and the linden fragrance, so heady,

that I can hardly Let’s go!

Let’s go and abandon this garden5

and the rain that seethes on its paths

between the flowers grown heavy,

kissing the sticky loam.

Let’s go, let’s go before it’s too late,

quick, under one cloak, come home,10

while you still are unrecognized,

my mad one, my mad one!

Self-control, silence. But with each year,

to the murmur of trees and the clamor of birds,

the separation seems more offenseful15

and the offense more absurd.

And I fear ever more that rashly

I may blab and interrupt

the course of the quiet, difficult speech

long since penetrating my life.20

Above red-cheeked slaves

the blue sky looks all lacquered,

and pumped-up clouds

with scarcely discernible jerks

move across.25

I wonder, is there nowhere a place there,

to lie low — some dark nook

where the darkness might merge

with a wing’s cryptic markings?

(A geometrid thus does not stir30

spread flat on a lichened trunk.)

What a sunset! And once more tomorrow

and for a long time the heat is to last,

a forecast faultlessly based

on the stillness and on the gnats:35

hanging up in an evening sunbeam,

their swarmlet ceaselessly jiggles,

reminding one of a golden toy

in the hands of a mute peddler.

How I love you! In this40

evening air, now and then,

the spirit finds loopholes, translucences

in the world’s finest texture.

The beams pass between tree trunks.

How I love you! The beams45

pass between tree trunks; they band

the tree trunks with flame. Do not speak.

Stand motionless under the flowering branch,

inhale — what a spreading, what flowing! -

Close your eyes, and diminish, and stealthily50

into the eternal pass through.

Urging on this life’s denouement,

loving nothing upon this earth,

I keep staring at the white mask

of your lifeless face.

Strings, vibrating and endlessly dying,5

with the voice of your beauty call.

Amidst pale crowds of drowned young maidens

you’re the palest and sweetest of all.

In music at least linger with me!

Your lot was chary of bliss.10

Oh, reply with a posthumous half-smile

of your charmed gypsum lips!

Immobile and convex the eyelids.

Thickly matted the lashes. Reply —

can this be for ever, for ever?15

Ah, the way they could glance, those eyes!

Touchingly frail young shoulders,

the black cross of a woolen shawl,

the streetlights, the wind, the night clouds,

the harsh river dappled with dark.20

Who was he, I beseech you, tell me,

your mysterious seducer? Was he

some neighbor’s curly-locked nephew

of the loud tie and gold-capped tooth?

Or a client of star-dusted heavens,25

friend of bottle, billiards, and dice,

the same sort of accursed man of pleasure

and bankrupt dreamer as I?

And right now, his whole body heaving,

he, like me, on the edge of his bed,30

in a black world long empty, sits staring

at a white mask?

At sunset, by the same bench,

as in the days of my youth,

At sunset, you know the kind,

with a bright-colored cloud and a chafer,

At the bench with the half-rotten board,5

high above the incarnadine river,

As then, in those distant days,

smile and avert your face,

If to souls of those long dead

it is given sometimes to return.10

We so firmly believed in the linkage of life,

but now I’ve looked back — and it is astonishing

to what a degree you, my youth,

seem in tints not mine, in traits not real.

If one probes it, it’s rather like a wave’s haze5

between me and you, between shallow and sinking,

or else I see telegraph poles and you from the back

as right into the sunset you ride your half-racer.

You’ve long ceased to be I. You’re an outline — the hero

of any first chapter; yet how long we believed10

that there was no break in the way from the damp dell

to the alpine heath.

What happened overnight to memory?

It must have snowed: such stillness! Of no use

Was to my soul the study of Oblivion:

that problem has been solved in sleep.

A simple, elegant solution.5

(Now what have I been bothering about

so many years?) One does not see much need

in getting up: there’s neither bed, nor body.

From room to hallway a candle passes

and is extinguished. Its imprint swims in one’s eyes,

until, among the blue-black branches,

a starless night its contours finds.

It is time, we are going away: still youthful,5

with a list of dreams not yet dreamt,

with the last, hardly visible radiance of Russia

on the phosphorent rhymes of our last verse.

And yet we did know — didn’t we? — inspiration,

we would live, it seemed, and our books would grow,10

but the kithless muses at last have destroyed us,

and it is time now for us to go.

And this not because we’re afraid of offending

with our freedom good people; simply, it’s time

for us to depart — and besides we prefer not15

to see what lies hidden from other eyes;

not to see all this world’s enchantment and torment,

the casement that catches a sunbeam afar,

humble somnambulists in soldier’s uniform,

the lofty sky, the attentive clouds;20

the beauty, the look of reproach; the young children

who play hide-and-seek inside and around

the latrine that revolves in the summer twilight;

the sunset’s beauty, its look of reproach;

all that weighs upon one, entwines one, wounds one;25

an electric sign’s tears on the opposite bank;

through the mist the stream of its emeralds running;

all the things that already I cannot express.

In a moment we'll pass across the world’s threshold

into a region — name it as you please:30

wilderness, death, disavowal of language,

or maybe simpler: the silence of love;

the silence of a distant cartway, its furrow,

beneath the foam of flowers concealed;

my silent country (the love that is hopeless);35

the silent sheet lightning, the silent seed.

Will you leave me alone? I implore you!

Dusk is ghastly. Life’s noises subside.

I am helpless. And I am dying

Of the blind touch of your whelming tide.

He who freely abandons his country5

on the heights to bewail it is free.

But now I am down in the valley

and now do not come close to me.

I’m prepared to lie hidden forever

and to live without name. I’m prepared,10

lest we only in dreams come together,

all conceivable dreams to forswear;

to be drained of my blood, to be crippled,

to have done with the books I most love,

for the first available idiom15

to exchange all I have: my own tongue.

But for that, through the tears, oh, Russia,

through the grass of two far-parted tombs,

through the birchtree’s tremulous macules,

through all that sustained me since youth,20

with your blind eyes, your dear eyes, cease looking

at me, oh, pity my soul,

do not rummage around in the coalpit,

do not grope for my life in this hole

because years have gone by and centuries,25

and for sufferings, sorrow, and shame,

too late — there is no one to pardon

and no one to carry the blame.

To a single colossal oculus,

without lids, without face, without brow,

without halo of marginal flesh,

man is finally limited now.

And without any fear having glanced5

at the earth (quite unlike the old freak

that was dappled all over with seas

and smiled with the sun on one cheek),

not mountains he sees and not waves,

not some gulf that brilliantly shines,10

and not the silent old cinema

of clouds, and grainfields, and vines,

and of course not a part of the parlor

with his kin’s leaden faces — oh, no,

in the stillness of his revolutions15

nothing in that respect will he know.

Gone, in fact, is the break between matter

and eternity; and who can care

for a world of omnipotent vision,

if nothing is monogrammed there?20

And now there rolls in, as on casters, a character,

waxlike, lean-loined, with red nostrils soot-stuffed,

and I sit and cannot decide: is it human

or nothing special — just garrulous dust?

Like a blustering beggar, the pest of the poorhouse,5

like an evil old schoolmate, like the head spy

(in that thick slurred murmur: ‘Say, what were you doing

in such and such place?’), like a dream,

like a spy, like a hangman, like an evil old schoolmate,

like the Influence on the Balkan Novella of - er -10

the Symbolist School, only worse. There are matters, matters,

which, so to speak, even... (Akakiy Akakievich

had a weakness, if you remember, for ‘weed words’,

and he’s like an Adverb, my waxy guest),

and my heart keeps pressing, and my heart keeps tossing,15

and I can’t any more — while his speech

fairly tumbles on downhill, like sharp loose gravel,

and the burry-R’d meek heart must harken to him,

aye, harken entranced to the buoyant gentleman

because it has got no words and no fame.20

Like a mockery of conscience in a cheap drama,

like a hangman, and shiverings, and the last dawn —

Oh, wave, swell up higher! The stillness is grateful

for the least bit of ternary music No, gone!

I can’t make my tongue conform to those accents,25

for my visitor speaks — and so weightily, folks,

and so cheerfully, and the creep wears in turn

a panama hat, a cap, a helmet, a fez:

illustrations of various substantial arguments,

headgear in the sense of externalized thought?30

Or maybe — oh, that would be really something

if thereby the clown indicated to me

that I kept changing countries like counterfeit money,

hurrying on and afraid to look back,

like a phantom dividing in two, like a candle35

between mirrors sailing into the low sun.

It is far to the meadows where I sobbed in my childhood

having missed an Apollo, and farther yet

to the alley of firs where the midday sunlight

glowed with fissures of fire between bands of jet.40

But my word, curved to form an aerial viaduct,

spans the world, and across in a strobe-effect spin

of spokes I keep endlessly passing incognito

into the flame-licked night of my native land.

To myself I appear as an idol, a wizard45

bird-headed, emerald gloved, dressed in tights

made of bright-blue scales. I pass by. Reread it -

and pause for a moment to ponder these lines.

Addressed to non-beings. Apropos, that shuffle

is no viaduct, but a procession of clouds,50

and deprived of the simplest of possible blessings

(reaching up to the elbows, the temples, the eyes),

‘Your poor books,’ he breezily said, ‘will finish

by hopelessly fading in exile. Alas,

those two thousand leaves of frivolous fiction55

will be scattered; but genuine foliage has

a place where to fall: there’s the soil, there’s Russia,

there’s a path drenched by maples in violet blood,

there’s a threshold where lie overlapping gold aces,

there are ditches; but your unfortunate books60

without soil, without path, without ditch, without

threshold,

will be shed in a void where you brought forth a branch,

as bazaar fakirs do (that is, not without faking),

and not long will it bloom in the smoke-colored air.65

Who, some autumn night, who, tell us, please, in the

backwoods

of Russia, by lamplight, in his overcoat,

amidst cigarette gills, miscellaneous sawdust,

and other illumed indiscernibles — who70

on the table a sample of your prose will open,

absorbed, will read you to the noise of the rain,

to the noise of the birch tree that rushes up window-ward

and to its own level raises the book?

No, never will anyone in the great spaces75

make mention of even one page of your work;

the now savage will dwell in his savage ignorance,

friends of steppes won’t forget their steppes for your sake.’

In a long piece of poetry, ‘Fame’, the author

is concerned, so to speak, with the problem, is irked80

by the thought of contacting the reader’s awareness . . .

‘This too, I’m afraid, will vanish for good.

So repeat after me (as one rakes a delicious

sore to get to the end, to its heaven): Not once,

not once will my name come up briefly, save maybe85

—as a star briefly passing among tragic clouds —

In a specialist’s work, in a note to the title

of some émigré churchyard and on a par

with the names of my co-orthographical brethren

which a matter of locus had forced upon me.90

Repeated? And furthermore, not without brio,

you happened to write in some quite foreign tongue.

You recall the particular anise-oil flavor

of those strainings, those flingings in verbal distress?

And a vision: you are in your country. Great writer.95

Proud. Unyielding. But no one dares touch you. At times,

A translation or fragment. Admirers. All Europe

Esteems you. A villa near Yalta. A hero.’

Then I laugh, and at once from my pen nib a flight

of my favorite anapests rises,100

in the night making rocket streaks with the increase

in the speed of the golden inscribing.

And I’m happy. I’m happy that Conscience, the pimp

of my sleepy reflections and projects,

did not get at the critical secret. Today105

I am really remarkably happy.

That main secret tra-ta-ta tra-ta-ta tra-ta —

and I must not be overexplicit;

this is why I find laughable the empty dream

about readers, and body, and glory.110

Without body I’ve spread, without echo I thrive,

and with me all along is my secret.

A book’s death can’t affect me since even the break

between me and my land is a trifle.

I admit that the night has been ciphered right well115

but in place of the stars I put letters,

and I’ve read in myself how the self to transcend —

and I must not be overexplicit.

Trusting not the enticements of the thoroughfare

or such dreams as the ages have hallowed,120

I prefer to stay godless, with fetterless soul

in a world that is swarming with godheads.

But one day while disrupting the strata of sense

and descending deep down to my wellspring

I saw mirrored, besides my own self and the world,125

something else, something else, something else.