On Parting
Teasing and tempting and playing
We loved like children, us both
But somebody, hiding a smile,
Set up the ungentle nets -
And here we are at the harbor,
Not seeing the wished-for abodes,
But knowing that I will be yours
In the heart, without words, until death.
You told me of all things - so early!
I guessed them so late! In our hearts
A wound is eternal, a silent
Question exists in our eyes,
The desert on earth is so endless,
The heaven, so high, has no stars,
Revealed is the tender secret,
And frost rules for centuries.
I will talk to shades! O my dear,
To forget you I do not have might,
Your visage can't move under shadow
Of eyelids gone over my eyes...
It's darkening... Shutters have closed,
On all things descending is night...
I love you, one ghostly-eternal,
And only you - and always!
x x x
It is true, is it not, that our souls are not used yet to
parting?
With a ****mmer of glimmering wings they each other call!
Someone higher parted the arms, tenderly interwoven,
But forgot the remembering souls.
Every evening, lit up by the will of a sorceress gentle.
Every evening, when over the hills, in the heart, stands the fog,
To the soul not forgetting the former deception comes near
With a meek and not confident walk.
Like the wind, that with sharp gusts awakens the things of times
prior,
From the glimmering lines your are smiling at me once again.
All is permitted, all! You from dream, I in dream. Will not judge
us
The angst of the day.
Someone higher betrayed us to nameless delicious torment,
(Many wanderings blunderings through dark and snow there will
be!)
Someone higher parted the arms, tenderly intevowen...
Not responsible for this are we!
To Sergei Efron
Like seaweed are your limbs, like branches
Of weeping willows of the sea.
Thus you did lie in sprays of sea foam
Transfixing absent-mindedly
Upon the sweet light-golden melons
Of diamond and aquamarine
The eyes forever semi-open
So blue-and-grayish, bluish-green.
The waves are just like rabid lions,
The arrows of the sun did fly.
And from intolerable blueness
Too whitish, you did there lie.
Behind the back, the desert, somewhere
The station Djankoi had to be,
And underneath your arm stretched out
Melon grew golden quietly.
Thus, calm and precious, you lie there,
Don't give a glance and do not see,
But look - and waves will heave with power,
And mountains will be moved to sea.
And new moons will in sky be burning,
And joyful lions will lie down
Under the single downward leaning
Of your head beautiful and young.
x x x
How many people fell in this abyss,
I fathom from afar!
There will be time, and I will vanish too
From earth's exterior.
All will be still, that sang and that did struggle,
That glistened and rejoiced:
The greenness of my eyes, the gold of my hair,
And this my tender voice.
Life will continue with its soft hot bread,
With day's oblivion.
All will continue - under outstretched heavens
As if I'd never been!
Like children changeable in every mien
And angry not for long,
Who loved the times when in the fireplace
Into ash turned the log,
Violin and cavalcade within the forest
And in the village, bell...
Upon this dear earth - I will be no longer
That was alive and real!
To all - who are the friends and strangers
To never having known the measure, me?
I turn to you with this my faith's demand
And love's query.
Both day and night, in word and letter both:
For truth of yes and no,
For that though I am but twenty I am
So often in such sorrow,
For unavoidably my slights and tresp*****
Will be forgiven me -
For all of my impetuous tenderness
And look too proud and free -
For quickness of events as they come ru****ng,
For truth, for play, say I -
Please hear me! But do also please love me
For this that I will die.
To Alla
1
You will be innocent, gorgeous,
Refined - and to all alien.
A striving, aspiring mistress,
An enticing Amazon.
Your braids of hair, most likely,
To wear like a helmet you'll choose,
You will be the queen of the ballroom -
Of all the poems of our youth.
And your vicious blade of humor
Will pierce through many, queen,
And you will have at your feet
All of which I can but dream.
All will be obedient to you,
And all before you will be quiet.
Like me, you will indisputably
And better poems write.
But will you press tight and deadly
Those temples of yours - who knows -
Just like your young mother
Is pressing her temples now.
2
Yes, I am jealous of you
With such a jealousy!
Yes, I also disturb you
With my angst already.
And this my miserable nature
In you is most awfully clear:
In your without two months two years -
You're in despair.
All dolls in whole wide world, all horses
You'll give without a second thought
For one page from my notebook
And pencil I brought.
You're in a fight with maids - you want
To do all things alone.
Then suddenly you're in despair:
"The sea's gone home."
However proudly I speak of you,
I can't transmit you all about
When you are asking me, "Mother,
Please kiss my snout."
You know, all in me is laughing
When somebody once again
Attempts to kiss you
In vain.
I am the s**** that took the princess,
A dragon! Groom of grooms! O light
Of my eyes - O the jealousy
Of my night!
x x x
I like it that you're burning not for me,
I like it that it's not for you I'm burning
And that the heavy sphere of Planet Earth
Will underneath our feet no more be turning
I like it that I can be unabashed
And humorous and not to play with words
And not to redden with a smothering wave
When with my sleeves I'm lightly touching yours.
I like it, that before my very eyes
You calmly hug another; it is well
That for me also kissing someone else
You will not threaten me with flames of hell.
That this my tender name, not day nor night,
You will recall again, my tender love;
That never in the silence of the church
They will sing "halleluiah" us above.
With this my heart and this my hand I thank
You that - although you don't know it -
You love me thus; and for my peaceful nights
And for rare meetings in the hour of sunset,
That we aren't walking underneath the moon,
That sun is not above our heads this morning,
That you - alas - are burning not for me
And that - alas - it's not for you I'm burning.
To Akhmatova
O muse of weeping, the most beautiful muse!
O you the child of white night, ever mad and fierce!
A black snowstorm over Russia you send
And your cries our hearts like flying arrows pierce.
And we tumble down and a deaf "Oh" -
A hundred thousand people your name are calling:
Anna Akhmatova! The name is a giant sigh,
And she who is nameless into the abyss is falling.
We're blessed that along with you we walk the same
Earth, that the sky is the same overhead;
And he, who is wounded with your mortal fate,
As an immortal goes onto his deathbed.
In my singing city the cupolas are aflame,
And wandering blind man praises the Spassky light..
And I give to you my city that's full of bells,
Akhmatova, and my heart I give to you beside.
x x x
Who's made of stone, who's made of mud,
And I'm made from silver and ****ne.
My act is betrayal, my name is Marina,
The fragile sea foam am I.
Who is made from mud, who is made from flesh -
There's coffin and coffin plates..
Baptized in a sea font and unceasingly
Broken in my flight!
Through every heart, through every net
Will poke its head my will.
You will not make me the salt of the earth
Can you see these my loose curls?
I resurrect with each wave, pounding
Against your granite knees!
May be well the foam - the high foam -
The happy foam of the seas!
"Comedian"
It's not love, but fever! Light
Battle's sly and full of lies.
Now it's nauseous, next day sweet,
Now he's dead, next day alive.
Battle rages. Both are laughing:
How intelligent are they!
By both heroine and hero
I am charmed in every way.
Viewer, a battle - or a dance now?
This a sword - or cattle stick?
Step ahead - three steps back now,
Three steps forward - one step back.
Mouth like honey, in the eyes, trust,
But already raised, the brow.
It's hypocrisy, not love now,
It is acting, and not love!
And result of these (parentheses -
Uncommitted so far) sins -
Will be of astounding poems
A stack oh-so-very thin.
Two Songs
Yesterday you looked in my eyes,
And all things slant aside right now!
Yesterday you sat before birds
And now all larks turn into crows!
I'm dumb, and you are very smart,
You live, I'm stupefied, I hear.
O cry of women of all times:
"What have I done to you, my dear?!"
Tears are to her like water, blood -
Like water, washed in blood, in tears!
Don't wait for trial or mercy: love
Is stepmother, not Mom, it's clear.
****ps bear away the ones we love,
A white road them away now bears...
And stands the moan across all earth:
"What have I done to you, my dear?"
Yesterday you lay at my feet!
Compared to China! When both hands
You forced apart from fists to palms
Life fell out like a rusty cent!
At trial, as killer of a child
I stand - not dear, and full of fear.
And I will say to you in hell:
"What have I done to you, my dear?"
I'll ask the chair, I'll ask the bed:
"Why do I suffer and am poor?"
They answer "He has kissed - now break
Upon the wheel; now kiss one more."
To live he taught in fire itself,
He threw on icy steppes, austere!
What did you, dear, do to me?
What have I done to you, my dear?
I know all - do not contradict!
Seeing anew - no more the lover!
Where love no longer does exist,
There Death the gardener comes over.
Itself - why shake the tree? In time
Ripe apple falls itself, you near.
For all, for all forgive me please,
What have I done to you, my dear!
Praise to Aphrodite
1
Blessed are the ones that left your daughters, Earth,
To fight in wartime battle and to run,
Blessed are the ones that having never tried
Comfort went to the fields Elysian.
Thus grows the laurel - writer of the years,
Heater of battle, sober, with harsh leaves.
I will never exchange for bitter fate of love
The friend****p's over-the-clouds cliffs.
2
Already gods' - not the same generosity,
Upon the shore of river's shore, not the same one.
Fly, fly again, the doves of Aphrodite
Into wide open gates of setting sun.
I'll leave in day, in which there is no count,
Lying upon the sand that's growing cold...
I've outgrown my youth and look upon it
Like s**** that's looking at his skin of old.
3
In vain, inside the promised branches hiding,
Your tender retinue thunders above.
I drop a myrtle that did love so many,
I drop the belt that did so sweetness love.
With a dumb arrow that is heavily piercing
Freed me from these my shackles your own son.
Thus at the very throne of my calmness
You born of foam, as a foam be gone!
4
How many, how many of them, white and blue
Eat from the hands!
Whole kingdoms are clucking around your lips
O Lowliness!
In gold of cup the deadly sweat
Does not translate.
The mantle-wearing general will vanish
Like dove of white.
Every cloud like a chest circles
In a bad hour.
There is your visage, O she-devil, in
Each perfect flower.
You fleeting foam, the salt of the sea..
In torment and foam -
For what reason should I obey
You, armless stone?
x x x
The demon in me
Is not dead but lives!
In self like in jail
In body like in bilge.
Exit is axe
From the world that is walls
(An actor mumbles,
"A stage is the world.")
And lump-legged jester
Did not act sly.
In body - like in glory.
Like in toga - in body.
Many a year!
Hold dear that you're alive!
(Only the poets
In bone - like in lie!)
We won't make merry,
Singing brothers,
In body like in cotton
Gown of a father.
We cost the better.
In heat we wilt.
In body - like in stall.
In self - like in a pot.
Transitory magnificence
We do not hold.
In body - like in morass,
In body - like in vault,
In body - like in extreme
Exile. - Wilt!
In body - like in secret,
In temples - like in a grip
Of an iron mask.
Elderberry
Elderberry fills the whole garden!
Elderberry is green, green,
Greener, than mold on the vat!
Greener, than summer at the start!
Elderberry - till the end of days!
Elderberry greener than my eyes!
And after - through the night - with the fire
Of Rostov! - it is red in the eyes
From the trill of bubbly elderberry.
Redder than measles on one's own body
In all your times, azure,
Measles that scatters and pours
Of elderberry - till winter, till winter!
That in small berry sweeter
Than poison, what are dissolved paints!
Of red cotton, sealing wax and Hades
Mix, a ****mmer of corral beads,
And a taste of baked blood.
Elderberry has been killed, has been killed!
Elderberry the whole hall filled
With blood of young and pure,
With blood of branches of fire -
With the blood most merry -
With blood of heart of you and me...
And later - grain's waterfall will be,
And later - black is elderberry:
With plum something, sticky something.
Over the gate, moaning with violin,
Near the house, which is empty,
Is lonely bush of elderberry.
Elderberry, without mind, without mind,
Of your beads, elderberry, am I!
Steppe - to Mongol, Caucasus - to Georgian will go,
To me - elderberry bush under window
Give. Instead of Arts Palace, only
Give this bush of elderberry.
Newcomers in my country -
From the berry - elderberry,
My ruddy childhood thirst,
From the tree and from the word:
Elderberry (till this day - at nights...),
Poison - sucked in by the eyes...
Elderberry is red, is red!
Elderberry - took the whole land
In its paws. In power, my childhood all.
Something like passion criminal,
Elderberry, between you and me
Century's disease - elderberry
I would call...
x x x
Longing for homeland! Long ago
Exposed torment! To me
It is completely all the same
Where completely lonely to be,
By which stones on the road home
With the bazaar knapsack to drag
Home, not knowing, that it's mine,
Like hospital or a barrack.
It's same to me, among which faces
Like an imprisoned lion to bristle,
And from among which people's midst
To be forced out - without fail -
Into oneself, into individual feelings.
As polar bear without ice floe
Where not to live - it's the same to me
(And I don't dare) - where to go low.
I won't be tempted by the milky
Call of my own native tongue.
It is the same to me on which
To be not sensed by meeting ones.
(To reader of newspaper tons,
To gulper, milker of rumors.) He
Is of the twentieth century,
And I - without a century!
Grown petrified just like a log
Remaining only of an alley,
They're all the same, it's all the same,
And maybe most the same - to me -
Dearer than everything that was.
All marks from me, all signs that were,
All dates - brushed off as if by hand:
Soul, that had once been born - somewhere.
Thus my land did not keep me there,
That the detective most keen
Along the soul, across it all!
The birthmark has not sought or seen!
Alien is home, temple - empty,
And all's the same and one to me.
But if along the road a bush
Rises, especially - ashberry...
x x x
I still convey the word and still
The first one verse I do repeat:
"I dressed the table for the six"...
But seventh one you did forget.
It is not merry for us six.
On faces are the streams of rain+
How could you over such a table
Forget the seventh - seventh one+
It is not merry for the guests,
Idle is pitcher of crystal,
Sad are they all, sad are you too,
But saddest is the one uncalled.
It is not merry and not light.
Ah! You don't drink and do not eat.
How could you have forgotten this?
How could you have erred in the count?
How could you, dared, not understand,
That six (two brothers, the third -
You, with wife, father and mother) there
Are seven - that I'm in this world?
You dressed the table for the six,
But with six the world did not die.
More than the scarecrow midst the live
I want to be a ghost - with (mine),
Yours... Shy just like a thief,
O - never touching but a soul! -
Behind the silverware unmade
I sit as seventh one, uncalled.
At once! I overthrew the glass!
An all that thirsted to be poured -
All salt from eyes, all blood from wounds -
From tablecloth - on the floorboards.
And - there's no coffin! No - parting!
Broken is spell, wakes up the home.
Like death - onto the wedding feast,
I'm - life, that to dinner have come.
And I still scold, for nobody -
Not brother, husband, son or friend:
"You, dressed the table for six souls,
Did not seat me upon the end."
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
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