Selected Poems

The careful muffled sound

Of a fruit breaking loose from a tree

In the middle of the continual singing

Of deep forest silence…

Suddenly, from the dimly lit hall

You slipped out in a light shawl;

The servants slept on,

We disturbed no one…

To read only children’s books, treasure

Only childish thoughts, throw

Grown-up things away

And rise from deep sorrows.

I’m tired to death of life,

I accept nothing it can give me,

But I love my poor earth

Because it’s the only one I’ve seen.

In a far-off garden I swung

On a simple wooden swing,

And I remember dark tall firs

In a hazy fever.

On pale-blue enamel,

Conceivable in April,

Birch-trees lifted branches

And eveninged imperceptibly.

Fine netting cut

Thin patterns exactly:

A design on a porcelain plate

Traced accurately

By the considerate artist

On his firmament of glass –

Knowing a short-lived strength,

Oblivious of sad death.

What shall I do with the body I’ve been given,

So much at one with me, so much my own?

For the quiet happiness of breathing, being able

To be alive, tell me to whom I should be grateful?

I am gardener, flower too, and not alone

In the world’s dungeon.

My warmth, my exhalation, one can already see

On the window-pane of eternity.

The pattern printed in my breathing here

Has not been seen before.

Let the moment’s condensation vanish without trace:

The cherished pattern no one can efface.

A sadness beyond words

Opened two huge eyes,

The vase of flowers woke up

And its crystal made a splash.

The whole room filled

With languor – that sweet medicine!

Such a small kingdom

To swallow so much sleep.

A little red wine,

A little sunlight in May,

And white delicate fingers

Break a thin sponge-cake.

Words are unnecessary,

There being nothing to learn:

How sad and exemplary

Is an animal’s dark heart!

It has no urge to instruct

And no use for words,

And swims like a young dolphin

Along the grey gulfs of the world.

She who has not yet been born

Is both word and music

And so the imperishable link

Between everything living.

The sea’s chest breathes calmly,

But the mad day sparkles

And the foam’s pale lilac

In its bowl of turbid blue.

May my lips attain

The primordial muteness,

Like a crystal-clear sound

Immaculate since birth!

Remain foam, Aphrodite,

And – word – return to music;

And, fused with life’s core,

Heart be ashamed of heart!

Ear-drums stretch their sensitive sail,

The widening gaze empties,

An unsinging choir of midnight birds

Swims across the silence.

I am as poor as nature,

As naked as the sky,

And my freedom is spectral

Like the voice of the midnight birds.

I see the unbreathing moon

And a sky whiter than a sheet;

Your strange and morbid world

I welcome, emptiness!

Like the shadow of sudden clouds,

A visitor from the sea swoops down

And, nipping past, whispers

Along embarrassed shores.

An enormous sail austerely soars;

Dead-white, the wave shrinks back –

And once more will not dare

To touch the shore;

And the boat, rustling through the waves

As though through leaves…

I grew, rustling like a reed,

Out of a dangerous swamp,

Breathing the air of a forbidden life

With rapture, languor, caresses.

In my cold and marshy refuge

No one notices me,

And I am welcomed by the whisper

Of short autumn minutes.

I enjoy this cruel injury

And in a life like a dream

Secretly am envious of everyone –

And secretly enamoured.

Sultry dusk covers the couch,

It’s stifling…

Dearest of all to me, perhaps,

The slender cross and secret path.

How slowly the horses move,

How dark the light the lanterns throw!

Where they are taking me

These strangers surely know.

I am cold, I want to sleep.

Confident of their concern,

Suddenly towards starlight

I’m thrown at the turn.

The nodding of a fevered head,

The caring, icy hand of a stranger;

And, not yet visible to me,

Outlines of dark fir.

Light sows a meagre beam

Coldly in the sodden forest.

I carry slowly in my heart

The grey bird, sadness.

What shall I do with the wounded bird?

The firmament is silent, dead.

From a belfry masked by mist

Someone has stolen the bells.

And the high ground stands,

Orphaned, dumb –

A white and empty tower

Of quietness and mist.

The morning, unfathomably tender,

Half real and half reverie;

Unquenched drowsiness;

The misty ringing of thoughts…

It may be, night, you do not need me;

Out of the world’s abyss,

Like a shell without pearls,

I am cast on your shores.

Indifferently, you stir the waves

And immitigably sing;

But you shall love and cherish

This equivocal, unnecessary shell.

You shall lie down on the sand close by,

Apparelled in your raiment,

And bind to the shell

The colossal bell of the billows.

And your whispering spray shall fill,

With wind and rain and mist,

The walls of the brittle shell –

A heart where nobody dwells…

I hate the light

Of the monotonous stars.

Salutations to you, my ancient delirium –

Altitude of an arrowed tower!

Be lace, stone,

Become a cobweb:

Lacerate the void

With a fine needle.

My turn shall also come:

I sense the spreading of a wing.

Yes – but where will the shaft

Of living thought fly?

My time and journey over,

Perhaps I shall return:

I couldn’t love there;

Here – I’m afraid to…

In the haze your image

Trembled; it troubled

And eluded me: mistakenly

I said, ‘Good God!’

The name of the Lord – a large bird –

Flew from my breast.

In front: a swirl of mist.

Behind: the empty cage.

No, not the moon, but a bright clock-face

Shines on me. Am I to blame

If the feeble stars strike me as milky?

And I loathe Batyushkov’s conceit:

When asked the time,

His answer was – Eternity.

I am overcome by dread

In the face of mysterious heights;

I’m satisfied by a swallow in the sky

And I love the way a bell-tower soars!

I feel I am the age-old traveller

Who, on bending planks, above the abyss,

Listens to the snowball grow

And eternity strike on stone clocks.

If it could be! But I am not that wayfarer

Flickering against faded leaves:

True sadness sings in me.

There’s an avalanche in the hills!

And all my self is in the bells,

Though music cannot save one from the abyss!

I’m not in favour of premeditated happiness:

Sometimes nature is a grey blemish

And I’m sentenced, slightly tipsy,

To taste the colours of impoverishment.

The wind is playing with a tousled cloud,

The anchor scrapes the ocean bottom;

My mind, lifeless as linen,

Hangs over nothingness.

But I like the casino on the dunes:

The vast view from the misty window,

A thin ray of light on the crumpled tablecloth;

And, with greeny water all around,

When, like a rose, the wine is in its glass,

I like to follow the sea-gull’s wings!

On a walk I came across a funeral

Near the Lutheran church, last Sunday.

An absentminded passer-by, I stopped to watch

The rigorous distress on the faces of the flock.

I couldn’t make out what language they were speaking,

And nothing shone except fine brass

And reflections from the lazy horse-shoes

On the toneless Sunday side-roads.

In the resilient half-light of the carriage

Where sadness, the dissembler, lay entombed,

Wordless and tearless and chary of greetings

A buttonhole of autumn roses gleamed.

The foreigners stretched out in a black ribbon

And weeping ladies went on foot,

Red faces veiled; while, above them,

Nothing stopped the stubborn coachman.

Whoever you were, Lutheran deceased,

They buried you with ease and artlessness,

Eyes were dimmed with the decency of tears,

Bells rang out with dignified restraint.

I thought – no need for speeches:

We are not prophets nor precursors,

We do not delight in heaven nor live in fear of hell,

In dull noon we burn like candles.

Hagia Sophia – here the Lord commanded

That nations and tsars should halt!

Your dome, according to an eye-witness,

Hangs from heaven as though by a chain.

All centuries take their measure from Justinian:

Out of her shrine, in Ephesus, Diana allowed

One hundred and seven green marble pillars

To be pillaged for his alien gods.

How did your lavish builder feel

When – with lofty hand and soul –

He set the apses and the chapels,

Arranging them at east and west?

A splendid temple, bathing in the peace –

A festival of light from forty windows;

Under the dome, on pendentives, the four Archangels

Sail onwards, most beautiful of all.

And this sage and spherical building

Shall outlive centuries and nations,

And the resonant sobbing of the seraphim

Shall not warp the dark gilt surfaces.

Where a Roman judged a foreign people

A basilica stands and, first and joyful

Like Adam once, an arch plays with its own ribs:

Groined, muscular, never unnerved.

From outside, the bones betray the plan:

Here flying buttresses ensure

That cumbersome mass shan’t crush the walls –

A vault bold as a battering-ram is idle.

Elemental labyrinth, unfathomable forest,

The Gothic soul’s rational abyss,

Egyptian power and Christian shyness,

Oak together with reed – and perpendicular as tsar.

But the more attentively I studied,

Notre Dame, your monstrous ribs, your stronghold,

The more I thought: I too one day shall create

Beauty from cruel weight.

Poisoned bread, satiated air,

Wounds impossible to bind.

Joseph, sold into Egypt, couldn’t have pined

With a deeper despair!

Bedouin, under the starry sky,

Each on a horse,

Shut their eyes and improvise

Out of the troubles of the day gone by.

Images lie close at hand:

Someone traded a horse,

Somebody else lost his quiver in the sand.

The hazy happenings disperse.

And if truly sung,

Wholeheartedly, at last

Everything vanishes, nothing is left

But space, and stars, and singer.

Horses’ hooves… The clatter

Of crude and simple times.

And the yardmen, in their sheepskin coats,

Sleep on the wooden benches.

A clamour at the iron gates

Wakes the royally lazy doorman,

Whose wolfish yawning

Recalls the Scythians

When Ovid, with senile love,

Blended Rome and snow,

And sang of the ox- and bullock-waggons

In the march of the barbarians.

There are orioles in the woods, and length of vowels

Is the sole measure in accentual verse.

But only once a year is nature lengthily protracted

And overflowing, as in Homer’s measure.

This day yawns like a caesura:

Quiet since morning, and arduous duration;

Oxen at pasture, and a golden indolence

To extract from the reed one whole note’s richness.

Nature is Roman, and mirrored in Rome.

We see its forms of civic grandeur

In transparent air, like a sky-blue circus,

In the forum of fields, in the colonnades of trees.

Nature is Roman, and it seems

Pointless to trouble any gods again:

There are sacrificial entrails to foretell war,

Slaves to keep silence, stones to build!

Sleeplessness. Homer. Taut sails.

I have counted half the catalogue of ships:

That caravan of cranes, that expansive host,

Which once rose above Hellas.

Like a wedge of cranes towards alien shores –

On the kings’ heads godlike spray –

Where are you sailing? Without Helen

What could Troy mean to you, Achaean men?

Both the sea and Homer – all is moved by love.

To whom shall I listen? Now Homer falls silent,

And a black sea, thunderous orator,

Breaks on my pillow with a roar.

Herds of horses gaily neigh or graze,

The valley rusts like Rome;

Time’s translucent rapids wash away

A classical Spring’s dry gold.

In Autumn as I tread the oak-leaves,

Thickly scattered on deserted paths,

I shall remember Caesar’s lovely profile:

Effeminate features, treacherous hook-nose.

Now Capitol and Forum are far away,

Nature is quietly fading;

Even on the earth’s rim I hear

The age of Augustus roll, a majestic orb.

When I am old may my sadness gleam.

I was born in Rome; it has come back to me;

Kind Autumn was my she-wolf

And August – month of the Caesars – smiled on me.

Newly reaped ears

Lie in level rows;

Fingertips tremble, pressed against

Fingers fragile as themselves.

The hunters have trapped you:

Stag, the forests shall mourn!

You can have my black coat, sun,

But preserve my living power!

The old men of Euripides, an abject throng,

Shamble out like sheep.

I slither like a snake,

In my heart – dark injury.

But it will not be long

Before I shake off sadness,

Like a boy in the evening

Shaking sand from his sandals.