Стихотворения

and limpidly the evenings shine.

Where lusty sickles swung and corn-ears bent
the plain is empty now: wider it seems.
Alone a silky filament
across the idle furrow gleams.

The airy void, now birdless, is revealed,
but still remote is the first whirl of snow;
and stainless skies in mellow blueness flow
upon the hushed reposing field.

<Январь 1944>

470. APPEASEMENT{*}

The storm withdrew, but Thor had found his oak,
and there it lay magnificently slain,
and from its limbs a remnant of blue smoke
spread to bright trees repainted by the rain —

— while thrush and oriole made haste to mend
their broken melodies throughout the grove,
upon the crests of which was propped the end
of a virescent rainbow edged with mauve.

<Осень 1944>

471. TEARS{*}

Human tears. О the tears! you that flow
when life is begun — or half-gone,
tears unseen, tears unknown, you that none
can number or drain, you that run
like the streamlets of rain from the low
clouds of Autumn, long before dawn…

<1944>

Владислав Ходасевич{*}

472. THE MONKEY{*}

The heat was fierce. Great forests were on fire.
Time dragged its feet in dust. A cock was crowing
in an adjacent lot.
                     As I pushed open
my garden-gate I saw beside the road
a wandering Serb asleep upon a bench
his back against the palings. He was lean
and very black, and down his half-bared breast
there hung a heavy silver cross, diverting
the trickling sweat.
                      Upon the fence above him,
clad in a crimson petticoat, his monkey
sat munching greedily the dusty leaves
of a syringa bush; a leathern collar
drawn backwards by its heavy chain bit deep
into her throat.
                 Hearing me pass, the man
stirred, wiped his face and asked me for some water.
He took one sip to see whether the drink
was not too cold, then placed a saucerful
upon the bench, and, instantly, the monkey
slipped down and clasped the saucer with both hands
dipping her thumbs; then, on all fours, she drank,
her elbows pressed against the bench, her chin
touching the boards, her backbone arching higher
than her bald head. Thus, surely, did Darius
bend to a puddle on the road when fleeing
from Alexander's thundering phalanges.
When the last drop was sucked the monkey swept
the saucer off the bench, and raised her head,
and offered me her black wet little hand.
Oh, I have pressed the fingers of great poets,
leaders of men, fair women, but no hand
had ever been so exquisitely shaped
nor had touched mine with such a thrill of kinship,
and no man's eyes had peered into my soul
with such deep wisdom… Legends of lost ages
awoke in me thanks to that dingy beast