Lifting my child like his own,
look, the Rider is rising
like the Tsar among surging clouds
he stands, with a frown on his face.
I saved him for you – now kill him!
Let your love go!
What suddenly cracked? Was it
a dry tree? No. Two arms
stretch toward the horse.
A girl – has lost – motherhood.
*
An evil dawn through the window crack
I dream my third dream.
February. Crooked roads.
The snowstorm in the fields
sweeps across wide tracks –
a whole tribe of winds.
I’m hopping over a slope
and then – up a steep mountain.
I’m following red, a red horse.
We are taking the same track.
For a moment – he’s there,
within hand’s reach and taunting:
Touch me. My hands find
nothing… Ahead, only horse and snow.
Winds, pile drifts on doorways!
cover the steep cliffs over
so that at last the red horse
has to stop dead in his tracks.
*
And now it’s not the blizzard
but a broom sweeps me away,
not the stroke of a sultan
but an old hag with grey
dishevelled hair and her nose
deep in the steam of a cauldron.
She has a rag in her hand,
and a covered decanter
with a glass, which at first
she sets aside – then sips
– What does it mean, my dream?
– Your Angel doesn’t love you!
A crack of thunder, that –
A crowbar on the skull.
My heads sinks into the pillow
I repeat He doesn’t love me.
Doesn’t love me? No need for braids, then.
Doesn’t love me? Or a necklace.
Doesn’t love me? I’ll mount a horse,
and ride off into battle.
*
Soldiers, who are we fighting?
A cold flame enters my chest
like a steel lance, a light beam
pierces under my breast.
And he whispers I wanted this.
It is for this I chose you,
you are my passion, my sister,
mine till the end of time
my bride of ice – in armour –
Mine. Will you stay with me
and belong to no one else?
With a hand on my wound, I agree.
So – not the Muse, not the Muse.
Not the ties of kinship which perish
not the fetters men call friendship
and not by a woman’s hand.
What tightens on me is a fierce
knot. This union frightens.
I am in a ditch, in darkness
even as dawn lightens.
Who attached these heavy wings
on my shoulders? I am
a witness of living storm –
someone who sees shadows,
until I am carried high
into the blue above us
at last – on a red horse –
by my own Genius!
13–17 January 1921
Praise to the Rich
And so, making clear in advance
I know there are miles between us;
and I reckon myself with the tramps, which
is a place of honour in this world:
under the wheels of luxury, at
table with cripples and hunchbacks…
From the top of the bell-tower roof,
I proclaim it: I love the rich.
For their rotten, unsteady root
for the damage done in their cradle
for the absent-minded way their hands
go in and out of their pockets;
for the way their softest word is
obeyed like a shouted order; because
because they don’t look in your eyes;
and because they send secrets by courier!
and their passions by errand boy.
In the nights that are thrust upon them they
kiss and drink under compulsion,
and because in all their accountings
in boredom, in gilding, in wadding,
they can’t buy me I’m too brazen:
I confirm it, I love the rich!
and in spite of their shaven fatness,
their fine drink (wink, and spend):
some sudden defeatedness
and a look that is like a dog’s
doubting…
the core of their balance
nought, but are the weights true?
I say that among all outcasts
there are no such orphans on earth.
There is also a nasty fable
about camels getting through needles
for that look, surprised to death
apologizing for sickness, as
if they were suddenly bankrupt: ‘I would have been
glad to lend, but’ and their silence.
I counted in carats once and then I was one of them.
For all these things, I swear it: I love the rich.
1922
God help us Smoke!
God help us Smoke!
– Forget that. Look at the damp.
These are the ordinary fears
of anyone moving house
approaching a poor lamp
for students in miserable outskirts.
– Isn’t there even a tree
for the children? What sort of landlord
will we have? Too strict?
in a necklace of coins, a porter
impervious as fate
to the shudder in our pockets.
What kind of neighbour?
Unmarried? Perhaps not noisy?
The old place was no pleasure
but still the air there breathed
our atmosphere, was soaked
in our own odours. Easy,
to put up with fetid air
if it isn’t soiled by outsiders!
It was old, of course, and
rotting, but still… Not a hostel room!
I don’t know about being born
but this is for dying in!
1922
Ophelia: In Defence of the Queen
Prince, let’s have no more disturbing
these wormy flower-beds. Look at
the living rose, and think of a woman
snatching a single day – from the few left to her.
Prince Hamlet, you defile the Queen’s
womb. Enough. A virgin cannot
judge passion. Don’t you know Phaedra
was more guilty, yet men still sing of her,
and will go on singing. You, with your blend
of chalk and rot, you bony
scandalmonger, how can you ever
understand a fever in the blood?
Beware, if you continue… I can
rise up through flagstones into the grand bed-chamber
of so much sweetness, I myself, to defend her.
I myself – your own undying passion!
1923
from WIRES
1
Along these singing lines that run
from pole to pole, supporting heaven
I send along to you my portion
of earthly dust.
From wires
to poles. This alley sighs
the telegraphic words: I lo-o-ve
I beg. (No printed form would
hold that word! But wires are simpler.)
Atlas himself upon these poles
lowered the racetrack
of the Gods.
Along these files
The telegraphic word: g-oo-dbye…
Do you hear it? This last word
torn from my throat: Forg-i-ve…
Over these calm Atlantic fields
the rigging holds. And higher, higher.
All the messages fuse together
in Ariadne’s web: Ret-u-rn…
and plaintive cries of: I won’t leave…
These wires are steely guards upon
voices from Hell,
receding… far into that distance
still implored for some compassion.
Compassion? (But in such a chorus
can you distinguish such a noise?)
That cry, arising as death comes –
through mounds – and ditches – that last
waft of her – passion that persists –
Euridice’s: A-a-alas
and not – a –
17 March 1923
2
If I spoke to you directly – not like this,
crushed into lines and rhymes –
but from my whole heart, even Racine
or Shakespeare could not cope with it!
Everyone wept, with poison in their blood.
They wept to see a snake among the roses.
But Phaedra had only one Hyppolitus,
and Ariadne only wept for Theseus –
while in losing you, I have lost
everything I love, I am adrift,
there is no shore, no boundary to pain –
everyone who ever lived is forfeit.
What can I hope for now? The very air
I breathe is so accustomed to you.
My own bones have grown into a prison,
lonely as Naxos – my blood is the Styx.
Vanity! In me – and everywhere!
To close my eyes against it has no meaning
– since there is no daylight – and besides
the date on the calendar is lying…
and when you – break off like this –
I am no Ariadne, no Phaedra.
Only loss!
Over which seas, in what cities
shall I look for you? (A blind
search for the invisible.) I must
rely on wires, and weep at every pole.
18 March 1923
3
Sorting through everything, throwing out
whatever I can, I reject first of all
the semaphore, that wildest discord
– though a whole chorus rushes to the rescue,
with sleeves like banners, still
I throw them all out – shamelessly.
A lyric drone of wires hums
above as if I were in traction.
The telegraph! Could we not communicate
more quickly? The sky is still above us,
a constant dispenser of emotion,
as tangible as lips…
The heavens arch above me
with dawn on the horizon,
even at this distance I can weave
a thread to reach you.
Across the harshest years of this epoch,
over disgusting piles of tackle and gear,
here fly my unpublished sighs
my raging passions – they are
simpler than a telegram (loyal, urgent
even hackneyed) they will cross
the space between us along
these wires as gutters flood in spring.
19 March 1923
4
A camp of freedom!
Telegraph wires carry
this cry of passion from
my womb to the winds.
A magnetic spark from my heart
has torn these rhythms open:
‘Metre and measure?’ The fourth
dimension announces itself!
Hurry – over dead metres – and
over false witness – whistling!
Hush… when suddenly your head
begins to ache (there are wires
everywhere) you will recognise
all this obscure verbiage is only
the song of a strayed nightingale who sings
– without the one you love the world is empty! –
for the lyre in your hands, beloved,
and the Leila of your lips.
20 March 1923
5
Patiently, as tarmac under hammers,
patiently, as what is new matures,
patiently, as death must be awaited,
patiently, as vengeance may be nursed.
So I shall wait for you. (One look down to earth.
Cobblestones. Lips between. And numb.)
Patiently, as sloth can be prolonged,
patiently, as someone threading beads.
Toboggans squeak outside, the door answers
Now the wind’s roar is inside the forest.
What has arrived is writing, whose corrections
are lofty as a change of reign, or a prince’s entrance.
And let’s go home!
This is inhuman –
yet it’s mine.
25 March 1923
6
At the very hour my dearest brother
passed beyond the last elm
(with a formal wave of the hand)
my tears were larger than my eyes.
In the hour when my dearest friend
sailed round the last Cape
(my whole being sighed: Come back!)
and the wave of my hand stretched
after him – from my shoulders –
my lips – followed – entreating
but my speech lost all sound,
my hands lost their fingers.
This is the hour when we approach
with gifts – nobler than the Tsars.
The hour when I come down the mountain.
And the mountain understands.
Wishes have gathered in a circle.
Destinies have shifted. Don’t complain!
In this hour, hands are invisible.
And souls begin to see.
In the hour when my dear guest
left me – Look, look at us!
Our tears were larger than human
eyes – and wider than the Atlantic
… – Stars!
26 March 1923
8
Wherever you are, I can reach you
to summon up – or send you back again!
Yet I’m no sorceress. My eyes grew sharp in
The white book of the distant River Don.
From the height of my cedar I see a world
where court decisions float, and all lights wander
yet from here I can turn the whole sea upside down
to bring you from its depths – or send you under!
You can’t resist me. Since I’m everywhere
as daylight, underground, in breath and bread
I’m always present. That is how I shall procure
your lips – as God will surely claim your soul –
In your last breath, even in that choking hour
I’ll be there at the great Archangel’s fence
To put these bloodied lips up against the thorns
of Judgement – and to snatch you from your bier!
Surrender! This is no fairy tale
Surrender! Any arrow will fall back on you.
Surrender! Don’t you know no one escapes
the power of creatures reaching out with
breath alone? (That’s how I soar up
with my eyes shut and mica round my mouth.)
Be careful, the prophetess tricked Samuel.
Perhaps I’ll hoodwink you. Return alone,
because another girl is with you. Now on Judgement Day
there’ll be no litigation. So till then
I’ll wander. And yet I’ll have your soul
As an alchemist knows how to win your
lips…
27 March 1923
9
Spring makes us sleepy. So let’s sleep.
We are apart, but separation
can be healed by sleeping. Perhaps
we may meet each other in a dream.
An all-seeing eye knows into whose
hand I will next place my palm;
to whom I will reveal this sorrow
and share my unhappiness
which is eternal (no child,
no father expects it to end).
It is the misery of those who cry,
without a shoulder to lean on,
about memory slipping through
fingers, like a stone from a bridge…
about the way all places are taken,
all hearts already rented.
It concerns serving – endlessly – having
to live – without happiness –
written off – before recognition – in archives
– that Paradise of the crippled –
it is about you and I, like quiet streams
running deeper than precious metal –
about everything stitched by a seamstress:
drudgery – drudgery – drudgery.