Стихотворения

What is your trouble —
people might query.
Just this is my trouble,
excellent people: the sky and the stars
are the stars and the sky, whereas I am a man.

People are envious
of one another.
I, on the contrary, —
only the beautiful stars do I envy,
only to be in their place do I wish.

<1947>

458. THE WISH{*}

Open the door of my prison,
let me see the daylight again,
give me a black-eyed maiden
and a horse with a jet-black mane.
Over the wide blue grassland
let that courser carry me,
and just once, just a little closer,
let me glance at that alien portion —
that life and that liberty.

Give me a leaky sailboat
with a bench of half-rotten wood
and a well-worn sail all hoary
from the tempests it has withstood.
Then I shall launch on my voyage,
friendless and therefore free,
and shall have my fling in the open
and delight in the mighty struggle
with the savage whim of the sea.

Give me a lofty palace
with an arbour all around
where amber grapes would ripen
and the broad shade fleck the ground.
Let an ever-purling fountain
among marble pillars play
and lull me to sleep and wake me
in a halo of heavenly visions
and the cool dust of its spray.

<1947>

Афанасий Фет{*}

459. ALTER EGO{*}

As a lily that looks at itself in a stream
so my very first song was your mirrored dream.
But whose was the triumph? Who gave and who took?
Was it brook from blossom or blossom from brook?

Your childish soul could so easily guess
the thoughts I was inwardly moved to express.
Though I live without you by a dreary decree,
we are one — for nothing can part you and me.

The grass on your grave in a distant clime
is here in my heart growing greener with time.
When I happen to glance at the stars, then I know
that together like gods we had looked at their glow.

Love has words of its own, these words cannot die.
Our singular case special judges will try:
in the crowd they will notice us right from the start —
for as one we will come — we whom nothing can part.

<Осень 1943>

460. «When life is torture, when hope is a traitor…»{*}

Die Gleichmossigkeit des Loufes der Zeit in allen Kopfen beweist mehr, als irgend etwas, dass wir Alle in denselben Traum versenkt sind, ja dass es Ein Wesen ist, welches ihrt traumt.