(вот откуда то, что явится тысячелетием позже).
Оставалось немного, чтобы увидеть,
как облокотясь о теплый капот виллиса. Что мог сказать
в ту пору? Как мог понять то, что не понимаю сегодня?
Как невыносимо свежо и косо несет бензином,
и какие-то на отлете белые платья женщин.
Конечно, вода, кувшинки, горячие латунные гильзы,
близорукость. Но даже и без вспомогательных стекол вижу,
как между тобою и мною растет и растет небо,
вздымаясь выше, чем Гималаи.
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From On the Shores of the Expelled River
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Из книги «На берегах исключенной реки»
Let us halt. Leaves, dry air, the absence of insects.
Here is the Pergamon frieze of changes,
shadows replace the missing parts of the eye—
the faience forced out.
Who can doubt their power,
yet dust devours the heroes, dust devours itself
circling in the light, in the sun, in the light of night—
alone its circling shivers the heartwood
of the incessant letter, the fruitless battle …
Take another step. Do not move.
That is how it’s done here. That is the rule.
And there is no occasion to doubt it.
[B.S., E.O.]
Повременим. Листва, сухость, отсутствие насекомых.
Это—Пергамский фриз изменений,
тени заменяют отсутствующие части глаза,—
фаянс исторгнут.
Могущество их несомненно,
однако пыль пожирает героев, пыль пожирает себя
на свету во вращении, в солнце, в луче ночи—
единственном, расщепляющем сердцевину
ежечасной буквы, бесплодной битвы …
Дальше ступить. Не двигаться.
Здесь так положено. Так принято.
В чем не приходится сомневаться.
To a Statesman
As requested by Arkady Bliumbaum—and the following evening with Zina and Evgeny Pavlov over Moldavian Cabernet Sauvignon; drifting banter about New Zealand.
When you, Statesman, speak dreams across the notebook,
because the rest menaces night with blue graphite,
and crumbs don’t captivate, nor cast-off clothes,
nor doors, nor veins along the calf, nor eyes,
nor glass in Aegean linens—
for you Stymphalian nightingales magnanimously whistle,
and someone thinks just before sleep that once, long ago
you played circular football, smashed your knee to pieces,
the rain washed over your heads and no one was anointed, slated …
But how much childhood grief was in the clay
that clung to us like ivy, Statesman,
how much tender pain in the loose gravel, the crunch; later
we raced to the stream through the Sunday crowd and the crowd
didn’t know
that we had lost that game, but then again, maybe we won it—
protocols turned to dust in concrete castles;
I don’t remember why evening spread itself over the table, when
she pulled off her jeans and in return asked for a book
the name of which I can’t remember … and the pines at night?
O Statesman,
don’t forget how you pulled tadpoles out of the rain barrel.
There algae swayed—Phrygian, pentatonic trifles,
and you caught sight of yourself and tried to launch a yacht in the cistern,
its depth over your head (you would have choked on water)
and the breadth just so, no higher than the waist, so that the little boat
seemed to be made of bread, and later,
empty years passed, lean as the rafters of a fire.
Was it not the obvious end that drove you not into the raspberry brambles
but the dry leaves, to the scythe’s swing through the clover. Were you crying
