Стихотворения

And here a life had come apart
in darkness, and the room had grown
a ghostly thorax, with a heart
unknown, unloved — but not alone.

<13 мая> 1950; Итака

421. VOLUPTATES TACTIONUM[16] {*}

Some inevitable day
On the editorial page
Of your paper it will say,
«Tactio has come of age».

When you turn a knob, your set
Will obligingly exhale
Forms, invisible and yet
Tangible — a world in Braille.

Think of all the things that will
Really be within your reach!
Phantom bottle, dummy pill,
Limpid limbs upon a beach.

Grouped before a Magnotact,
Clubs and families will clutch
Everywhere the same compact
Paradise (in terms of touch).

Palpitating fingertips
Will caress the flossy hair
And investigate the lips
Simulated in midair.

See the schoolboy, like a blind
Lover, frantically grope
For the shape of love — and find
Nothing but the shape of soap.

<27 января> 1951

422. RESTORATION{*}

To think that any fool may tear
by chance the web of when and where.
O window in the dark! To think
that every brain is on the brink
of nameless bliss no brain can bear,

unless there be no great surprise —
as when you learn to levitate
and, hardly trying, realize
— alone, in a bright room — that weight
is but your shadow, and you rise.

My little daughter wakes in tears:
She fancies that her bed is drawn
into a dimness which appears
to be the deep of all her fears
but which, in point of fact, is dawn.

I know a poet who can strip
a William Tell or Golden Pip
in one uninterrupted peel
miraculously to reveal,
revolving on his fingertip,

a snowball. So I would unrobe,
turn inside out, pry open, probe
all matter, everything you see,
the skyline and its saddest tree,
the whole inexplicable globe,

to find the true, the ardent core
as doctors of old pictures do
when, rubbing our a distant door
or sooty curtain, they restore
the jewel of a bluish view.