It’s dawning, but still there’s mist...
A frown has fallen over the sky.
“What sadness has come to me!”
Radiant furrows have plowed into clouds.
I hear fanfares!
“What sadness has come to me!”
Oh, those aren’t fanfares, but surmas and cannons.
Lie still, mother, don’t awaken!
Damnation to all, damnation to all, who’ve become beasts!
(Instead of sonnets and octaves).
Autumn
Over all cultures of the world May mold has grown.
Autumn. In the cities by four o’clock street lamps already are lit.
And in the village when the shepherd’s shadow reaches ten paces
The flocks are still driven home.
They said: you can buy some old regal crimson fabric,
somehow cover a rubbish heap and enthrone culture (you
just have to hold up its head!) – perhaps, again it
will speak to us.
And leaves fell. But the head did not hold up on the neck.
Then – they threw themselves into eclecticism. They took a little brick
and the same amount of music. They thought – it’ll work out well...
And leaves fell. But the head failed to hold up on the neck.
Over all the cultures of the world May mold has grown.
Antistrophe
Grown-ups and seven-year-olds sing:
“O, sweet apple, where are you rolling?”
Yes. The nation’s at pasture and the poets in furrows.
Enough of looking grimly at the workshop: the Forerunner’s always
less talented than the Messiah.
Terror
Once again we take the Gospels, philosophers, poets. The one
who said “it’s a sin to kill” the next morning lies with a bullet
in his head. And dogs fight over the body on a garbage heap.
Lie still, mother, don’t awaken!
The great idea demands sacrifices. But is it a sacrifice
when a beast eats a beast?
– don’t awaken, mother...
Cruel aestheticism! – but when will you stop
admiring a slashed throat?
A beast eats a beast.
Antistrophe
Airplanes and the perfection of technology – what good is it
when people don’t look each other straight in
the eye?
Don’t take the wicked to prison: they are
their own prison.
Universities, museums, and libraries will not give
what
brown,
gray,
and blue eyes can...
Rock-a
I sleep – can’t sleep. I bow to someone else’s will. I rock-a-.
And somehow suddenly there is abundance! Rock-a-bye...
Cockerels (a window) and the flood tide of green beer (through
the window) – the sound of “O” is everywhere.
“I don’t understand.” Marcel Etienne! Marcel Etienne!”
they shouted holding banners. Now they’re rotting in the ground.
You say that even I will die?
Through all of life a legato has spread (a factory whistle).
Enough of that! Turn my fate blue, too. Rock-a-bye...
But it’s just a bird outside the window singing: triplets, triplets!
And what about beauty? And immortality? – I remember
(it’s even funny): “for an eternity with you!” my love swore an oath.
Evidently only in spirit are people enharmonious. For all
tragedies and dramas are consonances in the end.
“Arise!” “A new power has entered the town!”
I open my eyes (“consonances”).
On the wall from the sunbeams, the lattice-framed window
forms a fiery sharp...
Antistrophe
Even when above boundless water
herds of winds grazed;
Even when mountains quivered, the earth cracked,
and along the rough grass, sharp as swords, various monsters
crawled –
– Clouds, carefree clouds played in the sun.
Tender childlike forms! – delicate outlines! – who
needed them?
A savage, having eaten his fill of raw meat, followed them
for a while with blank eyes while vacantly sniffing
a flower
that looked like thistle.
The Highest Power
“Get dressed for a firing squad!” someone shouted
and knocked at the door.
I awoke. The wind opened the window. The sky was turning
green and clearing. And above the entire city
an immense grand piano played...
And I understood. Easter had come.
Antistrophe
I’ll never love a woman without
a musical ear.
I pray not to the Spirit himself nor to Matter.
By the way: without music socialism can’t be established
by any cannons.
Rhythm
When two slender girls walk – with red poppies
in their hair –
– you think of somewhere far away! of young planets!
They float. They glide. Atoms of fatigue to the world,
into the light from darkness. They dance, raise dust... Suns
stand in a ring. And from them there’s a fluttering
through the whole universe.
Two girls.
Antistrophe
She poured some milk for the hungry children and sat down
lost in thought...
As though from blind eyes tears were rolling down a jug.
The first quicker, down. The second,
followed after
as if
reluctantly...
Two girls.
Evohe
The creators of the revolution are, for the most part, lyric poets.
The revolution is a tragic lyric, and not a drama
as it’s rumored.
Evohe!
Our offspring will train to walk behind a plow
no less than they now practice in a ballet studio. And
anyone who won’t know the song will be treated
like a true counterrevolutionary.
Everything in the world depends on squinting eyes.
Evohe!
Antistrophe
Join the party, where they look at a human being
as a world treasure, and where they all are one against
the penalty of death.
Let them call you creators behind closed blinds,
sentimentalists... Is it so important?
In our country to this day they don’t throw ashes on the garden,
but somewhere in a corner beneath a fence.
Who’ll Say
The rain dripped a little – and all the sidewalks now have
typhus...
The young novelist says: “I don’t want to, I can’t write!
The city weighs you down, life gets on your nerves.”
I was silent. Somewhere nearby a bomb...
“If we could only, say, go to the village. Bathe, walk
through the dew.”
“Kill the saboteur!” I read on
one of the posters.
And behind us were beggar women,
extending their hands –
Antistrophe
Grass grows wherever it wants. The wind tosses an order for
mobilization into a puddle. “Some milk!” a child cries,
but there isn’t even a scrap of bread.
Who’ll say: that there is a counterrevolution?
Chauvinistically
They take bread, coal, sugar, and repeat as though in
a toast:
“Well, may God grant you fortune...may we often continue
to eat dumplings in your land.
And, suing a neighbor about the fence, we respond:
“So be it, so be it...”
Sometimes it’s like this: the sky is clear,
but water’s drippings from the eaves.
Antistrophe
The rightists go back, but they try to hold their head
forward.
The leftists rush forward, but they’ve turned their heads back.
No matter how much you praise the teachings of Christ,
he still rode on asses and welcomed hosannas.
A Test
As soon as we began to love the land, took
a spade in our hands and rolled up our pantlegs...
“For God’s sake, pull up your cuffs, tell them
something: they’re asking if we have culture!”
Some lanky foreigners smoked through a pince nez.
And misery is all around – like tall weeds, like sugar-beet leaves!
And everywhere the earth is trampled, bright red...
Skovoroda once walked here.
Antistrophe
The most profound, the loftiest and, at the same time,
the simplest content is composed of two or three
notes – that’s a true hymn.
Not for contests, and not for awards, write
a contemporary “Christ is Risen.”
Emptiness
I wash. The water’s like metallophones. A curtain –
the wind with banners!
In the courtyard are poplars and women.
“But I’ll tell you: the town is completely surrounded.”
“Oh, my world!..”
The window was shut. Water quivers in a pitcher – a fan
whirling on the ceiling...
– It was yesterday that the workers at the factories...
( – – – clearly you can hear the cannonade).
It looks like rain.
Antistrophe
The city is decked out in painted posters: a person
stabbing another.
We read the list of the executed and are surprised
by pogroms in the provinces.
Everything can be justified by a lofty purpose – but
not the emptiness of the soul.
Tares
They shoot the heart, they shoot the soul – they
pity nothing.
...A child sat at the window, stuffing her fingers into her mouth,
peering out for her momma. But mother is lying in the street
with a half pound of bread in her hand...
Over the twentieth century
linger tares and Parsifal.
Antistrophe
It’s still not a revolution just to play Scriabin
for the prison guards.
The Eagle, a Trident, a Hammer and Sickle...and each
acts as your own.
But a rifle has killed our own.
Our own gun lies at the bottom of our soul.
Should I, too, kiss the slipper of the Pope?