Стихотворения

[20]

Schopenhauer, Porergo, II, 29.

When life is torture, when hope is a traitor,
when in the battle my soul must surrender,
then daily, nightly I lower my eyelids,
and all is revealed in a strange flash of splendor.

Like nights in autumn, life's darkness seems denser
between the distant and thunderless flashes.
Alone the starlight is endlessly friendly —
the stars that sparkle through golden bright lashes.

And all this lambent abyss is so limpid,
so close is the sky to my spirit's desire,
that, straight out of time into timelessness peering,
your throne I discern, empyrean fire.

And there the altar of all creation
stands still and smokes in a glory of roses.
Eternity dreams of itself, as the smoke-wreaths
vibrate with the forces and forms it composes.

And all that courses down cosmic channels,
and every ray of the mind or of matter
is but your reflection, empyrean fire,
dreams, only dreams that flit by and scatter.

And in that wind of sidereal fancies
I float like vapor, now dimmer, now brighter —
and thanks to my vision, and thanks to oblivion,
with ease I breathe, and life's burden is lighter.

<Осень 1943>

461. THE SWALLOW{*}

When prying idly into Nature
I am paticularly fond
of watching the arrow of a swallow
over the sunset of a pond.

See — there it goes, and skims, and glances:
the alien element, I fear,
roused from its glassy sleep might capture
black lightning quivering so near.

There — once again that fearless shadow
over a frowning ripple ran.
Have we not here the living image
of active poetry in man —

of something leading me, banned mortal,
to venture where I dare not stop —
striving to scoop from a forbidden
mysterious element one drop?

<Осень 1943>

Фёдор Тютчев{*}

462. NIGHTFALL{*}

Down from her head the earth has rolled
the low sun like a redhot ball.
Down went the evening's peaceful blaze
and seawaves have absorbed it all.

Heavy and near the sky had seemed.
But now the stars are rising high,
they glow and with their humid heads
push up the ceiling of the sky.

The river of the air between
heaven and earth now fuller flows.
The breast is ridded of the heat
and breaths in freedom and repose.