Doctor Zhivago

Part Seventeen

THE POEMS OF YURI ZHIVAGO

1

Hamlet

The hum dies down. I step out on the stage.

Leaning against a doorpost,

I try to catch the echoes from far off

Of what my age is bringing.

The night’s darkness focuses on me

Thousands of opera glasses.

Abba Father, if only it can be,

Let this cup pass me by.

I love the stubbornness of your intent

And agree to play this role.

But now a different drama’s going on—

Spare me, then, this once.

But the order of the acts has been thought out,

And leads to just one end.

I’m alone, all drowns in pharisaism.

Life is no stroll through a field.

2

March

The sun heats up to the seventh sweat,

And the ravine, gone foolish, rages.

Like the work of a robust barnyard girl,

Spring’s affairs are in full swing.

The snow wastes away with anemia

In the branchwork of impotent blue veins,

But life is steaming in the cowshed,

And the pitchfork’s teeth are the picture of health.

Oh, these nights, these days and nights!

The drumming of drops towards the middle of day,

The dwindling of icicles on the eaves,

The sleepless babbling of the brooks!

Everything wide open, stables and cowshed,

Pigeons peck up oats from the snow,

And the lifegiver and culprit of it all—

Dung—smells of fresh air.

3

Holy Week

Still the gloom of night around.

Still so early in the world,

The stars are countless in the sky,

And each of them as bright as day,

And if the earth were able to,

It would sleep its way through Easter

To the reading of the psalms.

Still the gloom of night around.

So early an hour in the world,

The square lies like eternity

From the crossroads to the corner,

And the light and warmth of dawn

Are still a millennium away.

The earth’s still bare as bare can be,

With nothing to put on at night

To go and swing the bells outside

And there back up the choristers.

And from Great and Holy Thursday

Right to Holy Saturday,

Water bores the riverbanks

And twines in whirlpools round itself.

And the woods are undressed, uncovered,

And at the service of Christ’s Passion,

Like the ranks of people praying,

Stand trunks of pine trees in a crowd.

And in town, with very little

Space, as at a local meeting,

Trees, stark naked, stand and look

Through the church’s grillwork gates.

And their gaze is filled with terror.

The cause of their alarm is clear.

Gardens are coming through the fence,

The order of the earth is shaken:

It is God they’re burying.

And they see light by the royal doors,

A black pall and a row of candles,

Tear-stained faces—suddenly

The procession of the cross

Comes to meet them with the shroud,

And two birches by the gate

Are forced to step aside for it.

And the procession makes its way

Around the yard and down the walk,

And brings to the chapel from outside

Spring, and springtime conversation,

And air that smacks of blessed bread,

And of spring’s intoxication.

And March squanders its hoard of snow

On cripples crowding by the porch,

As if a man came out to them

Carrying the ark, and opened it,

And gave away all to the very last.

And the singing goes on till dawn,

And, when it has sobbed its fill,

The reading of psalms and the epistle

Reaches more softly from inside

To vacant lots under the lamps.

But at midnight creature and flesh

Fall silent, hearing the springtime rumor

That the moment the weather clears

Death itself may be overcome

By the effort of the Resurrection.

4

White Night

I am dreaming of a far-off time,

A house over on the Petersburg Side.

The daughter of a modest steppe landowner,

You’re taking courses, you were born in Kursk.

You’re sweet, you have admirers.

On this white night the two of us,

Having settled on your windowsill,

Are looking down from your skyscraper.

Streetlights like gas butterflies,

Morning touched by a first tremor.

What I am softly telling you

Is so much like the sleeping distance!

We are gripped by the very same

Timid loyalty to the secret

As Petersburg spreading its panorama

Beyond the boundless river Neva.

Far off at the dense confines,

On this white night in the spring,

Nightingales fill the forest’s limits

With their thunderous hymns of glory.

The crazy trilling surges, rolls,

The voice of the little homely bird

Awakens ecstasy and turmoil

In the depths of the enchanted wood.

In those parts, night, the barefoot pilgrim,

Making her way along the fence,

Draws after her from the windowsill

A trail of overheard conversation.

To the echoes of talk heard aloud,

In orchards fenced with wooden palings,

Bending apple and cherry boughs

Clothe themselves in whitish flowers.

And the trees, like white apparitions,

Pour in a crowd out to the road,

Waving as if to bid farewell

To the white night that has seen so much.

5

Bad Roads in Spring

Sunset’s fires were burning down.

A man on horseback dragged himself

Over a bad road through the pines

To a far-off farmstead in the Urals.

The horse’s spleen was tossed about,

The splashing of its iron shoes

Was echoed in its wake by water

In the sinkholes of the springs.

When the rider dropped the reins

And went on at a walking pace,

The flooding waters spread nearby

With all their roar and rumbling.

Someone laughed, someone wept,

Stone against stone crashed and crumbled,

Tree stumps torn out by the root

Toppled into the whirling pools.

And at sunset’s conflagration,

In the far-off, blackened branches,

Like the tolling of the tocsin,

A nightingale sang furiously.

Where the widowed willow bowed

Her headdress over the ravine,

Like old Nightingale the Robber,

He whistled in the seven oaks.

What calamity, what ladylove

Was this ardor destined for?

At whom did he fire off his load

Of grapeshot in the thickset wood?

A demon, he seemed, about to step

From the camp of fugitives from hard labor

And go to meet the local posts

Of partisans, mounted or on foot.

Earth and sky, forest and field

Tried to snare this rarest sound,

These measured shares of madness, pain,

Happiness, and suffering.

6

A Final Talk

Life has come back as causelessly

As once it was strangely broken off.

I am here on the same old street

As then, that summer day and hour.

The same people and the cares the same,

And the fire of sunset not yet cooled,

As when death’s evening hastily

Nailed it to the wall of the Manège.

Women in cheap workday clothes

In the same way wear out their shoes at night.

And later the garrets crucify them

In the same way on the iron roofs.

Here one with a weary gait

Slowly emerges on the threshold

And, climbing up from the half basement,

Goes diagonally across the yard.

I again ready my excuses,

And again it’s all the same to me.

And the neighbor woman skirts the backyard,

Leaving the two of us alone.

———

Don’t cry, don’t pucker your swollen lips,

Don’t gather them in wrinkles.

You’ll reopen the dried-up scab

Of your spring fever sore.

Take your palm off of my breast,

We are high-tension wires,

Watch out, or by accident we may be

Thrown together again.

Years will pass, you will get married,

And forget all this disorder.

To be a woman is a giant step,

To drive men mad—heroic.

While at the miracle of a woman’s arms,

Shoulders, and back, and neck,

I’ve stood in reverence all my life

Like a devoted servant.

But howsoever night may bind me

With its anguished coil,

Strongest of all is the pull away,

The passion for a clean break.

7

Summer in Town

Talk in half whispers,

And with fervent haste

She gathers her hair up

In a shock from the nape.

A woman in a helmet

Looks from under the big comb,

Tossing back her head

With its braids and all.

But the night outside is hot

And promises bad weather,

And, shuffling as they pass,

Pedestrians head for home.

Abrupt thunder comes

With sharp reverberations,

And the wind flutters

The curtains of the windows.

A hushed stillness follows,

But it’s sultry as before,

And lightning as before

Rummages in the sky.

And when the intense, radiant

Morning heat dries up

The puddles on the boulevards

After the night’s downpour,

The still-flowering lindens,

Fragrant, centuries old,

Look gloweringly around them,

Having had too little sleep.

8

Wind

I’m no more, but you’re still alive,

And the wind, complaining, weeping,

Sways the forest and the dacha,

Not each pine tree separately,

But all in their entirety,

With all the boundless distances,

Like the hulls of sailing ships

On the smooth surface of a harbor.

And it’s not out of mere bravado,

Nor out of pointless fury, but

So as in anguish to find words

To make for you a lullaby.

9

Hops

Under a willow twined with ivy

We seek shelter from the rain.

Our shoulders are covered by a raincoat,

And my arms are twined about you.

I was wrong. These thick bushes

Are wound not with ivy, but with hops.

Better, then, let’s take this raincoat

And spread it out wide under us.

10

Indian Summer

The currant leaf is coarse as canvas,

There’s laughter in the house and the clink of glass,

There’s chopping there, and pickling, and peppering,

And cloves are put into the marinade.

The forest, like a scoffer, flings this noise

As far away as the precipitous slope

Where the hazel grove burnt by the sun

Looks as if a bonfire’s heat had scorched it.

Here the road descends into a gully,

Here you feel pity for the dry old snags

And for the poor ragpicker, Mistress Autumn,

Who sweeps it all down into the ravine.

And because the universe is simpler

Than some clever thinker might suppose,

Because the grove is feeling so crestfallen,

Because it is all coming to its end.

Because it is senseless to stand blinking

When everything before you is burnt down,

And the white autumnal soot

Draws its cobwebs across the window.

There’s a way from the garden through the broken fence,

And it loses itself among the birches.

Inside there’s laughter and the noise of housework,

And the same noise and laughter far away.

11

A Wedding

Cutting through the yard outside,

Guests came to make merry

In the bride’s house until dawn

With a concertina.

Back behind the masters’ doors,

Doubled with felt lining,

The snatches of small talk died down

Between one and seven.

Just at dawn, the deep of sleep,

Slumber, slumber, slumber,

The accordion struck up afresh

Going from the wedding.

The accordionist poured out anew

Music from his squeeze box,

The clap of hands, the flash of beads,

The din of merrymaking.

And again, again, again

The chattering chastushka

Burst right into the sleepers’ bed

From the joyous feasting.

And one woman white as snow

Amidst the noise and whistling

Floated again like a peahen

Swaying her hips in rhythm.

Tossing back her haughty head,

And with her right hand waving,

She went dancing down the road—

Peahen, peahen, peahen!

Suddenly the heat and noise of play,

The stomping of the round dance,

Went plunging into Tartarus

And vanished in a twinkling.

The noisy yard was waking up,

And the busy echo

Mixed itself into the talk

And the peals of laughter.

Into the sky’s immensity,

A whirl of blue-gray patches,

A flock of pigeons went soaring up,

Rising from the dovecote.

Just as if someone half-asleep

Suddenly remembered

To send them, wishing many years,

After the wedding party.

For life is only an instant, too,

Only the dissolving

Of ourselves, like the giving of a gift,

Into all the others.

Only a wedding that bursts its way

Through an open window,

Only a song, only a dream,

Only a blue-gray pigeon.

12

Autumn

I’ve let the family go its ways,

All those close to me have long dispersed,

And the usual solitude

Fills all of nature and my heart.

And so I’m here with you in the cabin,

In the unpeopled and deserted forest.

The paths and trails, as in a song,

Are half submerged in undergrowth.

Now the log walls gaze in sorrow

At us alone. We never promised

To take the obstacles, if we perish,

We shall do it openly.

We sit down at one, get up at three,

I with a book, you with your sewing,

And at dawn we won’t have noticed

How at some point we stopped kissing.

Rustle, leaves, rustle and fall

Still more splendidly and recklessly,

Let yesterday’s cup of bitterness

Brim over with the anguish of today.

Attachment, attraction, loveliness!

Let’s be scattered in September’s noise!

Bury yourself in autumnal rustling!

Freeze in place, or lose your mind!

You shed your dress in the same way

A grove of maples sheds its leaves,

When you fall into my embrace

In your robe with silken tassels.

You are the blessing of a fatal step,

When life’s more sickening than illness,

Yet courage is the root of beauty,

And that’s what draws us to each other.

13

A Tale

Once in olden times,

In a faery land,

A horseman made his way

Over the thorny steppe.

He was hastening to battle,

And far across the steppe,

Out of the dust a forest

Darkly rose to meet him.

An aching in his bosom,

A gnawing in his heart:

Fear the watering place,

Tighten the saddle girth.

The rider did not listen

And rode on at full speed,

Going ever faster

Towards the wooded knoll.

Turning at the barrow,

He entered a dry gap,

Passed beside a meadow,

Rode over a hill.

And finally reached a hollow,

And by a forest path

Came upon animal footprints

And a watering place.

And deaf to any warning,

And heedless of his sense,

He led his steed down the bankside

To water him at the stream.

———

By the stream—a cave,

Before the cave—a ford.

What seemed like flaming brimstone

Lighted the cave mouth.

And from that crimson screen,

Which hid all from view,

A distant call resounded,

Coming through the pines.

Then straight across the gully

The startled rider sent

His horse stepping surely

Towards the summoning cry.

And what the rider saw there

Made him clutch his lance:

The head of a dragon,

A long tail all in scales.

Its maw was spewing fire,

Spattering light about,

In three rings round a maiden

Its twisting length was wound.

The body of the serpent,

Like a whip’s lash,

Swayed about, just grazing

The shoulder of the girl.

The custom of that country

Was to bestow the prize

Of a captive beauty

On the monster in the woods.

The local population

Had agreed to pay this tax

Each year to the serpent

In ransom for their huts.

The serpent wound and bound her

And tightened on her neck,

Having received this tribute

To torture as it liked.

With a plea the horseman

Looked to the lofty sky

And prepared for battle,

His lance set at the tilt.

———

Tightly shut eyelids.

Lofty heights. Clouds.

Waters. Fords. Rivers.

Years and centuries.

The rider, without helmet,

Knocked down in the fight,

The faithful steed tramples

The serpent with his hoof.

Steed and dragon body

There upon the sand.

The rider is unconscious,

And the maiden stunned.

The heavenly vault at noonday

Shines with a tender blue.

Who is she? A royal princess?

A daughter of the earth? A queen?

First in a flood of happiness

Her tears pour out in streams,

Then her soul is mastered

By sleep and oblivion.

He first feels health returning,

But then his veins go still,

For his strength is failing

From loss of so much blood.

Yet their hearts keep beating.

And now she, and now he

Tries to awaken fully,

And then falls back to sleep.

Tightly shut eyelids.

Lofty heights. Clouds.

Waters. Fords. Rivers.

Years and centuries.

14

August

This morning, faithful to its promise,

The early sun seeped through the room

In an oblique strip of saffron

From the curtains to the couch.

It covered with its burning ochre

The nearby woods, the village homes,

My bedstead and my still moist pillow,

The edge of wall behind the books.

Then I remembered the reason why

My pillowcase was slightly damp.

I had dreamed you were walking through the woods

One after another to see me off.

You walked in a crowd, singly, in pairs,

Then someone remembered that today

Was the sixth of August, old style,

The Transfiguration of Our Lord.

Ordinarily a flameless light

Issues on this day from Tabor,

And autumn, clear as a sign held up,

Rivets all gazes to itself.

And you walked through little, beggarly,

Naked, trembling alder scrub

To the spicy red woods of the graveyard

Burning like stamped gingerbread.

The sky superbly played the neighbor

To the hushed crowns of its trees,

And distances called to each other

In the drawn-out voices of the cocks.

Death, like a government surveyor,

Stood in the woods among the graves,

Scrutinizing my dead face,

So as to dig the right-sized hole.

You had the physical sensation

Of someone’s quiet voice beside you.

It was my old prophetic voice

Sounding, untouched by decay:

“Farewell, azure of Transfiguration,

Farewell, the Second Savior’s gold.

Ease with a woman’s last caress

The bitterness of my fatal hour.

“Farewell, years fallen out of time!

Farewell, woman: to an abyss

Of humiliations you threw down

The challenge! I am your battlefield.

“Farewell, the sweep of outspread wings,

The willful stubbornness of flight,

And the image of the world revealed in words,

And the work of creation, and working miracles.”

15

A Winter Night

It snowed, it snowed over all the world

From end to end.

A candle burned on the table,

A candle burned.

As swarms of midges in summertime

Fly towards a flame,

Snowflakes flew from the dark outside

Into the window frame.

The blizzard fashioned rings and arrows

On the frosty glass.

A candle burned on the table,

A candle burned.

Shadows lay on the ceiling

In the candlelight,

Crossings of arms, crossings of legs,

Crossings of destiny.

And two little shoes dropped down

With a thump on the floor,

And wax tears from the night-light

Dripped on a dress.

And all was lost in the snowy murk,

Hoary and white.

A candle burned on the table,

A candle burned.

It blew at the candle from the corner,

And the heat of seduction

Raised up two wings like an angel,

Cruciform.

It snowed through all of February,

And time and again

A candle burned on the table,

A candle burned.

16

Separation

The man looks from the threshold,

Not recognizing his home.

Her departure was more like flight.

Havoc’s traces are everywhere.

All the rooms are in chaos.

The extent of the destruction

Escapes him because of his tears

And an attack of migraine.

Some humming in his ears since morning.

Is he conscious or dreaming?

And why does the thought of the sea

Keep coming to his mind?

When God’s world cannot be seen

Through the hoarfrost on the windows,

The hopelessness of anguish resembles

The waste of the sea twice over.

She was as dear to him

In her every feature

As the coast is near the sea

Along the line of breakers.

As waves drown the reeds

In the aftermath of a storm,

So her forms and features

Sank to the bottom of his soul.

In years of affliction, in times

Of unthinkable daily life,

She was thrown to him from the bottom

By the wave of destiny.

Amidst obstacles without number,

Past dangers in its way,

The wave bore her, bore her

And brought her right to him.

And now here is her departure,

A forced one, it may be.

Separation will devour them both,

Anguish will gnaw their bones.

And the man looks around him:

At the moment of leaving

She turned everything upside down,

Emptying the dresser drawers.

He wanders about and till nightfall

Keeps putting scattered scraps

Of fabric and pattern samples

Back into the drawer.

And pricking himself on a needle

Stuck into some sewing,

All at once he sees the whole of her

And quietly starts to weep.

17

Meeting

Snow will cover the roads,

It will heap up on the rooftops.

I’ll go out to stretch my legs:

You’re standing near the door.

Alone in a fall coat,

Without hat, without warm boots,

You’re fighting back agitation

And chewing the wet snow.

Trees and lattice fences

Go off into the murk.

Alone amidst the snowfall,

You stand at the corner.

Water runs from your kerchief

Down your sleeve to the cuff,

And drops of it like dewdrops

Sparkle in your hair.

And a flaxen strand

Illuminates: your face,

Your kerchief and your figure,

And that skimpy coat.

Snow moist on your lashes,

Anguish in your eyes,

And your entire aspect

Is formed of a single piece.

As if with iron dipped

In liquid antimony,

You have been engraved

Into my very heart.

And the meekness of those features

Is lodged in it forever,

And therefore it’s no matter

That the world’s hardhearted.

And therefore everything

On this snowy night is doubled,

And I can draw no boundary

Between myself and you.

But who are we, where from,

If of all these years

There remains only gossip,

And we’re no longer here?

18

The Star of the Nativity

It was winter.

Wind was blowing from the steppe.

And the infant was cold there in the grotto

On the slope of the hill.

He was warmed by the breathing of the ox.

Domestic animals

Stood about in the cave,

And a warm mist floated above the manger.

Shaking bed straw from their sheepskin capes

And grains of millet,

Shepherds on the cliff

Stood looking sleepily into the midnight distance.

Far off there was a snowy field and graveyard,

Fences, tombstones,

A shaft stuck in a snowdrift,

And the sky over the cemetery, full of stars.

And alongside them, unknown till then,

More bashful than an oil lamp

In a watchman’s window,

A star glittered on the way to Bethlehem.

It blazed like a haystack, quite apart

From heaven and God,

Like the gleam of arson,

Like a burning farm, a fire on a threshing floor.

It raised itself up like a flaming rick

Of straw and hay amidst

The entire universe,

Which took alarm at the sight of this new star.

A reddish glow spread out above it

And had a meaning,

And three stargazers

Hastened to the call of the unprecedented light.

After them came camels bearing gifts.

And harnessed asses, one smaller than the other,

Moved down the hillside with little steps.

And in a strange vision of the time to be,

All that came later rose up in the distance,

All the thoughts of the ages, the dreams, the worlds,

All the future galleries and museums,

All pranks of fairies, all tricks of sorcerers,

All the Christmas trees on earth, all children’s dreams.

All the flicker of gleaming candles, all the paper chains,

All the magnificence of gaudy tinsel …

… All the more fiercely the wind blew from the steppe …

… All the apples, all the golden balls.

Part of the pond was hidden by the tops of the alders,

But part of it was perfectly visible from there,

Through the nests of jackdaws and the treetops.

The shepherds could make out very well

How the asses and camels went past the dam.

“Let’s go with them to worship the miracle,”

They said, wrapping their leather coats around them.

Scuffling through the snow made them hot.

Across the bright clearing, like sheets of mica,

The tracks of bare feet led behind the hovel.

At these tracks, as at the flame of a candle end,

The sheepdogs growled in the light of the star.

The frosty night was like a fairy tale.

And from the heaped-up snowdrifts, all the while,

Someone invisibly slipped into their ranks.

The dogs trudged on, looking warily around,

And pressed to the herdsboy, and expected trouble.

Down the same road, over the same country,

Several angels walked in the thick of the crowd.

Bodilessness made them invisible,

But their tread left the imprints of their feet.

By the stone a throng of people crowded.

Daybreak. Cedar trunks outlined themselves.

“And who are you?” asked Mary.

“We’re of the tribe of shepherds and heaven’s envoys.

We’ve come to offer up praises to you both.”

“You can’t all go in together. Wait by the door.”

In the predawn murk, as gray as ash,

Drivers and shepherd boys stamped about,

The men on foot cursed the men on horseback,

At the hollowed log of the water trough

Camels bellowed, asses kicked.

Daybreak. Dawn was sweeping the last stars

Like specks of dust from the heavenly vault.

And only the Magi of that countless rabble

Would Mary allow through the opening in the rock.

He slept, all radiant, in the oaken manger,

Like a moonbeam in the wooden hollow,

Instead of a sheepskin coat, he had for warmth

The ox’s nostrils and the ass’s lips.

They stood in shadow, like the twilight of a barn,

Whispering, barely able to find words.

Suddenly, in the darkness, someone’s hand

Moved one of the Magi slightly to the left

Of the manger. He turned: from the threshold, like a guest,

The star of the Nativity looked in at the maiden.

19

Dawn

You meant everything in my destiny.

Then came war, devastation,

And for a long, long time there was

No word of you, no trace.

And after many, many years

Your voice has stirred me up again.

All night I read your Testament,

As if I were reviving from a faint.

I want to go to people, into the crowd,

Into their morning animation.

I’m ready to smash everything to bits

And put everybody on their knees.

And I go running down the stairs,

As if I’m coming out for the first time

Onto these streets covered with snow

And these deserted sidewalks.

Everywhere waking up, lights, warmth,

They drink tea, hurry for the tram.

In the course of only a few minutes

The city’s altered beyond recognition.

In the gateway the blizzard weaves

A net of thickly falling flakes,

And in order to get somewhere on time,

They drop their breakfast and rush off.

I feel for them, for all of them,

As if I were inside their skin,

I myself melt as the snow melts,

I myself knit my brows like morning.

With me are people without names,

Trees, children, stay-at-homes.

Over me they are all the victors,

And in that alone lies my victory.

20

Miracle

He was walking from Bethany to Jerusalem,

Already weighed down by sad presentiments.

The prickly brush on the steep hillside was scorched,

Over a nearby hut the smoke stood still,

The air was hot and the rushes motionless,

And the Dead Sea was an unmoving calm.

And in a bitterness that rivaled the bitterness of the sea,

He was going with a small throng of clouds

Down a dusty road to someone’s house,

Going to town, to a gathering of his disciples.

And he was so deep in his own thoughts

That the fields in their wanness smelled of wormwood.

All fell silent. He stood alone in the midst,

And the countryside lay flat, oblivious.

Everything mixed together: the heat and the desert,

And the lizards, and the springs and rivulets.

A fig tree rose up not far away

With no fruit on it, only leaves and branches.

And he said to it: “What good are you?

Is your stupor of any earthly use to me?

“I hunger and thirst, and you are a sterile blossom.

Meeting with you is more cheerless than with stone.

Oh, how galling you are and how ungifted!

Stay that way until the end of time.”

A shudder of condemnation ran down the tree,

Like a flash of lightning down a lightning rod,

And the fig tree was reduced to ashes.

If the leaves, the branches, roots, and trunk

Had found themselves a free moment at that time,

Nature’s laws might have managed to intervene.

But a miracle is a miracle, and a miracle is God.

When we’re perturbed, in the midst of our disorder,

It overtakes us on the instant, unawares.

21

The Earth

Spring comes barging loutishly

Into Moscow’s private houses.

Moths flutter behind the wardrobe

And crawl over the summer hats,

And fur coats are put away in trunks.

Pots of wallflowers and stock

Stand on the wooden mezzanines,

There’s a breath of freedom in the rooms,

And the garrets smell of dust.

And the street enjoys hobnobbing

With the nearsighted window frame,

And the white night and the sunset

Can’t help meeting by the river.

And in the corridor you can hear

What’s happening in the wide outdoors,

What April says to the dripping eaves

In a random conversation.

He can tell a thousand stories

About the woes of humankind,

And dawn feels chilly along the fences,

And draws it all out endlessly.

And that same mix of fire and fright

Outside and in our cozy dwellings,

And the air everywhere is not itself,

And the same transparent pussy willows,

And the same swelling of white buds

At the window and at the crossroads,

In the workshop and in the street.

Then why does the distance weep in mist,

And why does the humus smell so bitter?

In that precisely lies my calling,

So that the expanses won’t be bored,

So that beyond the city limits

The earth will not languish all alone.

It is for that my friends and I

Get together in early spring,

And our evenings are farewells,

Our little feasts are testaments,

So that the secret stream of suffering

Can lend warmth to the chill of being.

22

Evil Days

When in the last week

He was entering Jerusalem,

Thundering hosannas met him,

People ran after him with branches.

But the days grow more grim and menacing,

Love will not touch hearts.

Brows are knitted scornfully,

And now it’s the afterword, the end.

The sky lay over the courtyards

With all its leaden weight.

The Pharisees sought evidence,

Twisting before him like foxes.

And the dark powers of the temple

Hand him to the scum for judgment.

And with the same ardor as they praised him

Earlier, they curse him now.

The crowd from the lot next door

Peered in through the gates,

Jostling and shoving each other

As they waited for the outcome.

And a whisper crept through the neighbors,

And rumors came from all sides,

And childhood and the flight into Egypt

Were recalled now like a dream.

He remembered the majestic hillside

In the desert, and that height

From which Satan tempted him

With power over all the world.

And the marriage feast at Cana,

And the miracle that astonished the guests,

And the misty sea he walked on

To the boat, as over dry land.

And a gathering of the poor in a hovel,

And the descent into the dark cellar,

Where the candle died of fright

When the raised man stood up …

23

Magdalene

I

At nightfall my demon’s right here

In payment for my past.

Memories of depravity

Come and suck at my heart,

Of when, a slave of men’s fancies,

I was a bedeviled fool,

And the street was my only shelter.

A few minutes remain,

And then comes sepulchral silence.

But, before they pass,

Having reached the brink, I take

My life and smash it before you

Like an alabaster vessel.

Oh, where would I be now,

My teacher and my Savior,

If eternity had not been waiting

By night at the table for me,

Like a new client, lured

Into the nets of my profession?

But explain to me what sin means,

Death, hell, and flaming brimstone,

When, before the eyes of all,

I’ve grown into you like a graft on a tree

In my immeasurable anguish.

When I rest your feet, Jesus,

Upon my knees, it may be

That I am learning to embrace

The four-square beam of the cross

And, feeling faint, strain towards your body,

Preparing you for burial.

24

Magdalene

II

People are tidying up before the feast.

Away from all that fuss,

I wash your most pure feet

With myrrh from a little flask.

I feel for and do not find your sandals.

I can see nothing for my tears.

Loosened strands of hair

Fall over my eyes like a veil.

I rested your feet on my skirt

And poured tears over them, Jesus,

I wound them in a necklace of beads,

Buried them in the burnous of my hair.

I see the future in such detail

As if you had made it stop.

I am now able to predict

With a sybil’s prophetic clairvoyance.

Tomorrow the veil in the temple

Will fall, we will huddle in a circle

To one side, and the earth will sway underfoot,

Perhaps out of pity for me.

The ranks of the convoy will reform,

The cavalry will begin their departure.

Like a whirlwind in a storm, this cross

Will tear into the sky overhead.

I’ll throw myself at the foot of the crucifix,

Go numb and bite my lip.

For the embrace of all too many

You have spread your arms wide on the cross.

For whom on earth is there so much breadth,

So much torment and such power?

Are there so many souls and lives in the world?

So many villages, rivers, and groves?

But three such days will go by

And push me down into such emptiness,

That in this terrible interval

I’ll grow up to the Resurrection.

25

The Garden of Gethsemane

The bend of the road was lighted up

By the indifferent glitter of distant stars.

The road went around the Mount of Olives,

Down below it flowed the Kedron.

The little meadow broke off halfway,

Beyond it the Milky Way began.

The gray, silvery olive trees tried

To step on air into the distance.

At the end was someone’s garden plot.

Leaving his disciples outside the wall,

He said, “My soul is sorrowful unto death,

Tarry here and watch with me.”

He renounced without a struggle,

As things merely borrowed for a time,

His miracle-working and omnipotence,

And was now like mortals, like us all.

Now night’s distance seemed the verge

Of annihilation and nonbeing.

The expanse of the universe was uninhabited,

And the garden only was the place for life.

And, peering into those dark gulfs,

Empty, without beginning or end,

And sweating blood, he prayed to his Father

That this cup of death might pass.

Having eased his mortal anguish with prayer,

He went back out. There, on the ground,

His disciples, overcome with sleep,

Lay about among the roadside weeds.

He woke them: “The Lord has granted you

To live in my days, but you lie sprawling.

The hour of the Son of Man has struck.

He will give himself into the hands of sinners.”

He had barely said it when, who knows from where,

A crowd of slaves and vagabonds appeared,

Torches, swords, and at their head—Judas,

With a treacherous kiss upon his lips.

Peter rushed the cutthroats with his sword

And lopped off the ear of one. He hears:

“Disputes can never be resolved with iron.

Put your sword back in its place, man.

“Could my Father not provide me

With hosts of winged legions? Then,

Having touched not a hair upon my head,

My enemies would scatter without a trace.

“But the book of life has reached a page

Dearer than all that’s sacred.

What has been written must now be fulfilled.

Then let it be fulfilled. Amen.

“For the course of the ages is like a parable,

And can catch fire in its course.

In the name of its awful grandeur, I shall go

In voluntary suffering to the grave.

“I shall go to the grave, and on the third day rise,

And, just as rafts float down a river,

To me for judgment, like a caravan of barges,

The centuries will come floating from the darkness.”