Мария Визи - A moongate in my wall: собрание стихотворений

Enormous world, embraced by sleep and dusk,
in which we live so close we gasp for breath
not guessing the beginning or the end,
dreaming of happiness which conquers death.

This indestructible, poor mortal land!
But close your eyes: another lies beyond —
A world in which you are a midnight star
immobile in its speechlessness and bright,

— a world in which I am a limpid pool
whose face reflects your ever-shining light.
Above this world, that other will appear —
that's quite transparent, and quite simply clear.

A graceful swan that's slowly gliding
upon the mirror of the lake,
a falcon in the clouds abiding —
my dream-invented world is riding
in phantom imagery's wake.

Between its wings, unfurled and gleaming,
I slowly drift, not knowing where,
sweetly and languorously dreaming,
regretting nothing, nor redeeming,
melting in this transparent air.

And this prophetic voice of mine,
voice of my soul in dream's embrace,
above abysmal darkness flying,
is echoed hollowly, and, dying,
it disappears without a trace.

They will live very crowded — this Earth like a jail they will crowd,
Cod and hell and eternity even they all will deny,
and their houses of steel and concrete will reach up to the cloud,
and a huge zeppelin to the farthermost planet will fly.

And when over this world that is whirling the trumpet does sound,
and the firmament over this Earth opens wide like a gate,
and the lights all go out, and the graves open up in the ground,
none will then understand what is meant or believe anymore.

At midnight, when the pallid moon,
shivering as from cold and pain,
within its bluish aureole
soars upward past your windowpane,

when burnt by the celestial cold
silently floating in the dark
its rays that shimmer in the night
are barely heard above the park,

then, through the stillness and the dream,
in all your grief of long ago,
you will approach your windowsill
and push the panes apart and go

out of the darkness gliding up
a path by human eyes unseen
on which your foot will never slip
nor will you falter or careen.

And in the ringing solitude
with hand outstretched and sleeping eyes
heavy and cumbersome and slow
above the darkness you will rise

until from out the icy space,
the earthly blackness void and still,
some reveller's nocturnal voice
suddenly rises sharp and shrill.

Then, jolted, will the heavens rock
and swim, and lights go out that shone,
and dead onto the stones below
the moon will tumble like a stone.

Akhmatova, Ivanov, Mandelshtam —
forgotten notebook I have rescued here —
«Hyperboreus» — home for transient verse
of youthful poets in that happy year.

I found it at the bottom of a trunk
among my dusty archives lost retreat.
And forty year — is that not ancient yet?
To have survived so long — not yet a feat?

«October. Notebook Light. Nineteen Thirteen».
Year of the sunset, last bright, carefree year.
For all that followed was not life at all,
but time of reckoning, reprisal, fear.

This notebook — witness of a golden age,
these pages — that escaped the lethal stream!
I open it, I read — my eyes are wet, —
how young the poems, young the poets seem!

And I — how old! How wasted all these years!
How dark ahead what — emptiness behind!
What awesome thought — that not a trace of me
will anyone, in any notebook find!

The street lamps shed their meager light,
mist wove its wisps about the town,
a chilly twilight shuttered tight
all windows, drawing curtains down.

Then, growing white, not vapor-soft
but heavy, like a lowered load,
dusk let a fragile hoarfrost waft
onto the sidewalks and the road.

November midnight: winter's eve,
a helpless longing, taut distress
of autumn strings in mute reprieve,
leave-taking, but without redress…

A sketch from nature? — No: the time
was filled with flowers, springlike-bright,
when suddenly the poet's mind
envisioned this November night.

About him warm th and sunlight shone,
young foliage gleamed, birds flitted, gay,
everything bloomed, — his soul alone
had left this blossoming of May.

He roamed along deserted roads,
where street lamps shed their meager light,
where mist in pungent smoke-rings rose,
where hoarfrost tinged sidewalks white.

We parted at an early date, —
youth, — in the blackest year of war,
though we had been fast friends before,
still, friendship cannot conquer fate.

Our parting came at night, when skies
were dark above the steppe. Your way
was down the trail to yesterday,
and never once you raised your eyes.

Night quenched the heat, and scattered far
the glare of sunset; and the grass,
its strings by twilight winds harassed,
moaned in the steppe like a guitar.

And from afar I could discern
a voice that sang for me alone
that all my happy days were gone,
that you were never to return.

No matter where I look, I find
dimensions perfect everywhere:
a star is wondrously designed,
crystals are regular and fair.

Foolish, the beating heart, alone,
is not concerned with star or beam;
it will not cease to long and moan,
it's built on quite a different scheme.

Climb atop of the loftiest mountain,
gaze about from the peak where you stand
toward the sheen of the sunset in autumn,
and the sweep of the far land.

There is soundless music around you,
contemplation and stillness are deep.
It is evening. Mountain ranges
darken, waiting for quiet and sleep.

Black, like the pupil of an eye, like the pupil, sucking
light — I love you, vigilant night.

Give me voice to sing of you, oh original mother
of songs, holding the reins of four winds in your palm.

Calling you, glorifying you, I am only
a sea-shell, where the sound of the ocean has not yet been stilled.
Night! I've already looked long enough into the pupils
of man! Now reduce me to ashes, oh black sun, — night!

I know I will die at dawn, or at sunset — which of the two,
at which of the two — this cannot be foreordained!
Oh, if it only could be that my torch would be dimmed
both at sunset and sunrise, together, at once!
Dancing I walked over Earth! — the sky's own daughter!
Full of roses, my apron! Never a broken twig!
I will die at sunset or dawn! God won't send
the night hawk for my soul — the soul of a swan!

Moving the unkissed crucifix gently aside with my hand,
I will rush toward the generous sky for the ultimate greeting.
A slit of the dawn — and a slit of my smile in reply…
… In the hiccough of death, a poet still, — I!

On your dirk you etched «Marina»
when rising for the strife.
I was the first and only one
in all your splendid life.

I see the army boxcar hell,
that night, your radiant face…
Your curl I scattered to the winds,
your patch I laid in a secret place…

Не who survived will die, who died — will rise,
and when recalling olden days, a son
will ask «Where were you?» — like a roll of thunder,
so will answer thunder, «On the Don».
«What did you do?» — «We merely suffered tortures,
then we grew weary and lay down to sleep».
And pensively the sons, opposite «Duty»
will enter «Don» into the book they keep.

Above the meadows rings a requiem mass.
The secret book of Russia's Genesis
where all Earth's fates are hidden has been read
right to its end and has been tightly closed.

And round and round the steppe winds rove and scour
«Russia! Oh martyr! Rest in peace!»

If a soul is born with wings —
what does it care about earthly things!
About Genghis-khan and about his Horde!
I've but two enemies in this world,
twins who have ever together stood:
the hungry ones' hunger, the fed ones' food.