Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах

One night a score of Erris men,

A score I’m told and nine,

Said, “We’ll get shut of Danny’s noise

Of girls and widows dyin’.

There’s not his like from Binghamstown

To Boyle and Ballycroy,

At playing hell on decent girls,

At beating man and boy.

He’s left two pairs of female twins

Beyond in Killacreest,

And twice in Crossmolina fair

He’s struck the parish priest.

But we’ll come round him in the night

A mile beyond the Mullet;

Ten will quench his bloody eyes,

And ten will choke his gullet”.

It wasn’t long till Danny came,

From Bangor making way,

And he was damning moon and stars

And whistling grand and gay.

Till in a gap of hazel glen —

And not a hare in sight —

Out lepped the nine-and-twenty lads

Along his left and right.

Then Danny smashed the nose of Byrne,

He split the lips on three,

And bit across the right hand thumb

Of one Red Shawn Magee.

But seven tripped him up behind,

And seven kicked before,

And seven squeezed around his throat

Till Danny kicked no more.

Then some destroyed him with their heels,

Some tramped him in the mud,

Some stole his purse and timber pipe,

And some washed off his blood.

And when you’re walking out the way

From Bangor to Belmullet,

You’ll see a flat cross on a stone

Where men choked Danny’s gullet.

I asked if I got sick and died, would you

With my black funeral go, walking too,

If you’d stand close to hear them talk or pray

While I’m let down in that steep bank of clay.

And, No, you said, for if you saw a crew

Of living idiots pressing round that new

Oak coffin — they alive, I dead beneath

That board — you’d rave and rend them with your teeth.

There’s snow in every street

Where I go up and down,

And there’s no woman, man, or dog

That knows me in the town.

I know each shop, and all

These Jews, and Russian Poles,

For I go walking night and noon

To spare my sack of coals.

In a nook

that opened south,

You and I

Lay mouth to mouth.

A snowy gull

And sooty daw

Came and looked

With many a caw;

“Such”, I said,

“Are I and You,

When you’ve Kissed me

Black and Blue!”