* * *
GYPSY WEDDING
Dirt flies
From beneath hooves.
Before my face
Is a shawl — like a shield.
Have a good time, matchmakers,
Without the young pair!
Hey, take us away from this trouble spot,
Shaggy steed!
* * *
Father and mother
Didn’t give us our freedom,
Our wedding bed is —
The entire field for us.
* * *
Drunk without wine, sated without bread,
This is a gypsy wedding rushing by!
* * *
Glass’s filled,
Glass’s empty.
The guitar‘s rumble, the moon and dirt.
To the right and left the waist swayed.
The gypsy man — like a prince!
The prince — like a gypsy!
Hey, sir, be careful, it burns!
This is a gypsy wedding drinking!
* * *
There on a pile
Of shawls and fur coats,
The ringing and rustling
Of steel and lips.
Spurs jingled,
A coin necklace clinked as an answer.
Beneath someone’s arm silk
Whistled.
* * *
Someone begins to howl like a wolf,
Someone is snoring like a bull.
— This is a gypsy wedding asleep.
June 5, 1917
From CRAFT
(1923)
THE NOVICE
Tell me — what are you meditating about?
Into the rain — beneath a single cape,
Into the night — beneath a single cape, then
Into a coffin — beneath a single cape.
* * *
1
To be your fair-haired little boy,
— O, across all the ages! —
To follow behind your dusty purple
Wearing the coarse cape of a novice.
* * *
Through all the human dregs to catch
Your life-giving sigh
With the soul, living by your breath
Like the blowing of a cape by — a gust of wind.
* * *
More victorious than King David
To move the mob aside with my shoulder.
From all insults, from all earthly offense
To serve you as your cape.
* * *
To be among sleeping novices
The one who does not sleep in sleep.
At the first stone raised by the mob
To be no longer a cape — but a shield!
(O, this line of verse is not interrupted on purpose!
The knife has become too sharp!)
And — smiling with inspiration — to be the first
To ascend onto your pyre.
April 15, 1921
* * *
2
There is a certain hour15...
Tiutchev
There is a certain hour — that’s like a cast-off burden:
When we curb the arrogance within us.
The hour of apprenticeship that in every life
Is triumphantly inescapable.
* * *
A lofty hour, when laying down weapons
To the feet of the one pointed out to us — by God’s finger,
We exchange the purple of the Warrior
For camel hair on the ocean sand.
* * *
O, this hour, which like the Voice lifts us
to our deed — from the willfulness of days!
O this hour, when we stoop over
From our burden like a ripe ear of wheat.
* * *
And the grain has grown, and a blithe hour has struck,
And the seeds have craved millstones.
The law! The law! The yoke after which I lusted
When I was yet in the earthen womb.
The time of apprenticeship! But visible and knowable to us
Is another light, — another dawn has broken through.
Coming after it you are blessed —
You — the supreme hour of loneliness!
April 15, 1921
* * *
3
The sun of the Evening is – kinder
Than the sun at noon.
The sun is exceedingly cruel —
It doesn’t warm at mid-day.
* * *
The sun approaching night
Made wiser, it no longer wants
To beam into our eyes.
* * *
With its queen-like — anxiety-causing —
Simplicity,
The Evening Sun is dearer
To the singer of songs!
* * *
Crucified by the darkness
Every evening,
The sun of the Evening does not bow down
To the throng.
* * *
Overthrown from the throne
Don’t forget — Phoebus!
The overthrown — does not look down —
But into the sky!
O, don’t taper off on the neighboring
Bell tower!
I want to be your final
Bell tower.
April 16, 1921
* * *
6
All the splendor
Of trumpets is — just the babbling
Of grass — before Him.
* * *
All the splendor
Of storms is — just the chattering
Of birds before — You.
* * *
All the grandeur
Of wings is — just the trembling
Of eyelids before — You.
April 23, 1921
* * *
THE LEADER’S RETURN
The horse’s lame,
The sword’s rusty.
Who’s this?
The leader of throngs.
* * *
A stride is — an hour,
A sigh is — a century,
The gaze is — down,
All is — there.
* * *
An enemy. — A friend.
Thorns. — Laurels.
All is — a dream...
— He. — The horse.
* * *
The horse is — lame.
The sword is — rusty.
His cape is — ancient.
His stance is — straight.
July 16, 1921
From AFTER RUSSIA
(1928)
*
There is an hour for those words.
From auditory stupors
Life taps out
Its lofty laws.
* * *
Perhaps — from the shoulder,
Pressed out by the brow.
Perhaps — from a ray
Unseen during the day.
Dust into a useless string —
An arm-waving leap onto a sheet.16
A tribute to your fear
And to your dust.
* * *
The hour of ardent arbitrariness
And the quietest requests.
The hour of landless brotherhoods
And worldwide orphanedness.
June 11, 1922
* * *
*
Nocturnal whispers: a hand
Strewing silks.
Nocturnal whispers: lips
Smoothing silks.
Settling scores
* * *
Of all the daily jealousies —
and the flaring up
Of all antiquities — clenching jaws —
And the argument
Quieted —
In a rustle...
* * *
And a leaf
Into a window...
And the first bird’s whistle.
“So clear!” And a sigh.
* * *
Wrong one. Gone.
I left.
And the shudder
Of a shoulder.
* * *
Nothing.
Futility.
The end.
* * *
And into this vanity of vanities
This sword: the dawn.
June 17, 1922
* * *
THE BALCONY
Ah, from an open precipice —
Down into dust and tar!
The shortweight of earthly love
To salt with a tear — for how long?
A balcony. The tar of wicked kisses
Through salty downpours.
And the sigh of unreceding hate:
To be breathed out into a line of verse!
* * *
Squeezed into the hand like a lump —
What: a heart or a cambric
Rag? For these lotions
There is a name: the Jordan.17
* * *
Yes, for this battle with love
Is wild and cruel hearted.
Having soared up from a granite brow —
To be breathed out into death.
June 30, 1922
* * *
TREES18
8
Someone rides — to mortal victory.
Trees have — the gestures of tragedies.
Judea’s — sacrificial dance!
Trees have — the trembling of mysteries.
* * *
This is — a conspiracy against the age:
Against weight, counting, time, fractions.
Behold — a curtain torn to shreds:
Trees have the gestures of tombstones...
* * *
Someone rides. The sky is — like an entryway.
The trees have — the gestures of jubilations.
May 7, 1923
* * *
9
With what inspiration,
With what truths,
About what do you rustle?
Floods of leaves?
With which frantic Sibyl’s
Mysteries —
About what do you rustle,
About what do you rave?
What is your wafting about?
But I know you cure
The hurt of Time —
With the cold of Eternity.
* * *
But like a young genius
Rising up — you discredit
The lie of beholding
With God’s invisible finger.
* * *
So that anew, as once before,
The earth would appear to us,
So that beneath eyelids
Intentions can be fulfilled!
So that you do not boast
With the coins of miracles.
So that beneath eyelids
Mysteries come true.
* * *
Away from permanence!
Away from hurriedness!
Into the current! Into auguries
With indirect speech...
* * *
Is it foliage — like leaves?
Is it the Sibyl who has moaned herself out?
...Leafy avalanches,
Leafy ruins...
May 9, 1923
*
These are ashes of treasures:
Of losses, of hurts.
These are ashes before which
Granite turns — to dust.
* * *
A dove bare and bright
Not part of a pair.
Solomon’s ashes above
The great earthly vanity.
* * *
And the threatening chalk
Of sunsetless time.
It means God entered my doors —
After the house burned down!
* * *
Not stifled in rubbish,
Master of my dreams and days,
The spirit like a steep flame
Arises from premature grays!19
* * *
It is not you who betrayed me, years,
Behind my back!
This grayness is the victory
Of immortal powers.
September 27, 1922
* * *
OPHELIA TO HAMLET
Like Hamlet — laced up — tightly,
In the nimbus of dissuasion and knowledge,
Pale — to the last atom...
(From the edition of the year one thousand and what?)
With insolence and shallowness — don’t touch!
(A teenager’s attic stores!)
You have already lain — on this breast
Like some weighty chronicle,
* * *
Male virgin! Misogynist! Who prefers embracing
The foolish one... Did you think at least
Once about what — has been picked
In the flower bed of madness...
* * *
Roses?... But of course this is — hush! — The future!
We tear them — and new ones grow! Did the roses
Betray even once? The lovers —
Did they betray even once? Have they gone?
* * *
Having performed (having smelled sweetly) you will drown...
— It never was! — But we will rise in memory
At the hour when above the stream’s chronicle,
Like Hamlet — all laced up — you will rise...
February 28, 1923
* * *
OPHELIA — IN DEFENSE OF THE QUEEN
Prince Hamlet! Stop stirring up
The wormy sediments... Gaze at the roses!
Think of the one, who for the sake of just a single day —
Counts her last days.
* * *
Prince Hamlet! Stop discrediting
The queen’s womb... It’s not for male virgins — to judge
Passion. Phaedra’s guilt is — grave.
Yet they sing of her till this day.
* * *
And will continue to be! — But You, with your mixture of lime
And decay... Talk spitefully with the bones,
Prince Hamlet! With Your reason you cannot
Judge impassioned blood.20
* * *
But if... Then beware!... Through gravestones
Upward — into the bed chamber — to the heart’s content!
I stand to the defense of my queen —
I, Your immortal passion.
February 28, 1923
* * *
WIRES21
Des Herzens Woge schäumte nicht so schön
empor, und würde Geist, wenn nicht der alte
stumme Fels, das Schicksal, ihr entgegenstände.22
* * *
1
In a row of singing pillars,
Supporting the Empyrean,23
I send to you my share
Of the dale’s dust.
Along the alley
Of sighs — with a wire to a pole —
A telegraphic: I lo — o — ve...
* * *
I plead... (a standard blank form
Won’t fit it! It is simpler by wires!)
These are pillars, on them Atlas
Lowered a race track
Of Olympian gods...
Along the pillars
A telegraphic fa — are — well...
* * *
Do you hear? This is the last straining24
Of a lost voice: fa — are — well...25
These are riggings above a sea of fields,
The quiet Atlantic path:
* * *
Higher, higher — and we mer — ged
In Ariadne’s:26 re — turn,
* * *
Turn around!.. The melancholy call
Of charity hospitals: I won’t get out!
In the farewells of steel wires
Are the voices of Hades
* * *
Moving away... Conjuring
The distance: pi — ty...
Pity me! (In this chorus will you notice
It?) In the death rattle
Of obstinate passions is
The breath of Eurydice:
* * *
Through mounds — and — ditches
Eurydice’s: a — a — las,
Don’t lea —
March 17, 1923
* * *
6.
The hour when kings and gifts
Travel to one another above.
(The hour, when I walk from the mountain):
The mountains begin to understand.
* * *
Intentions heaped up into a circle.
Fates moved together: I won’t betray you!
(The hour when I don’t see hands)
* * *
Souls begin to see.
March 25, 1923
* * *