Молитва за Сына
Произнесу молитву от души тебе.
Спи спокойно сын мой Мойша,
не ворочайся и не плачь во сне,
пока стынет твоя утренняя каша.
Пусть сумерки гуще и держат,
в страхе всех до утра.
Мать живёт всегда с надеждой,
выспаться пока Луна полна.
Молю, чтоб призрак не стеречь,
я верю в них, с кем такое не бывает.
Пусть дьявол всюду с нами есть,
хотят убить, об этом кто-то знает.
В его высокомерных поступках,
что ожидают в грядущие дни,
ненависть теряется в бухтах,
сведи к нулю это, просто сведи.
Ведь ты можешь сделать всё,
просто так не гаснут свечи.
Утром пой, когда уже светло,
хоть не хватает внятной речи.
Скажу простую заповедь скорей,
никогда не плачь у женщин на колене.
Это худший позор плоти и костей,
наберись доступного терпения.
Священные Писания не лгут,
когда слуги твоего врага,
по городу везде бегут,
то это мужчина и женщина.
Иди, минуя бедность и богатство,
через горы, равнины, по морю.
Защищайся, пока есть опасность.
С человеческой к тебе любовью.
A woman young and old
I. FATHER AND CHILD
SHE hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes.
II. BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE
IF I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanitys displayed:
Im looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
Id have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.
III. A FIRST CONFESSION
I ADMIT the briar
Entangled in my hair
Did not injure me;
My blenching and trembling,
Nothing but dissembling,
Nothing but coquetry.
I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a mans attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones.
Brightness that I pull back
From the Zodiac,
Why those questioning eyes
That are fixed upon me?
What can they do but shun me
If empty night replies?
IV. HER TRIUMPH
I DID the dragons will until you came
Because I had fancied love a casual
Improvisation, or a settled game
That followed if I let the kerchief fall:
Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings
And heavenly music if they gave it wit;
And then you stood among the dragon-rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;
And now we stare astonished at the sea,
And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.
V. CONSOLATION
O BUT there is wisdom
In what the sages said;
But stretch that body for a while
And lay down that head
Till I have told the sages
Where man is comforted.
How could passion run so deep
Had I never thought
That the crime of being born
Blackens all our lot?
But where the crimes committed
The crime can be forgot.
VI. CHOSEN
THE lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much
Struggling for an image on the track
Of the whirling Zodiac.
Scarce did he my body touch,
Scarce sank he from the west
Or found a subterranean rest
On the maternal midnight of my breast
Before I had marked him on his northern way,
And seemed to stand although in bed I lay.
I struggled with the horror of daybreak,
I chose it for my lot! If questioned on
My utmost pleasure with a man
By some new-married bride, I take
That stillness for a theme
Where his heart my heart did seem
And both adrift on the miraculous stream
Where wrote a learned astrologer
The Zodiac is changed into a sphere.
VII. PARTING
i {He.} Dear, I must be gone
While night Shuts the eyes
Of the household spies;
That song announces dawn.
i {She.} No, nights bird and loves
Bids all true lovers rest,
While his loud song reproves
The murderous stealth of day.
i {He.} Daylight already flies
From mountain crest to crest
i {She.} That light is from the moon.
i {He.} That bird
i {She.} Let him sing on,
I offer to loves play
My dark declivities.
VIII. HER VISION IN THE WOOD
DRY timber under that rich foliage,
At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood,
Too old for a mans love I stood in rage
Imagining men. Imagining that I could
A greater with a lesser pang assuage
Or but to find if withered vein ran blood,
I tore my body that its wine might cover
Whatever could recall the lip of lover.
And after that I held my fingers up,
Stared at the wine-dark nail, or dark that ran
Down every withered finger from the top;
But the dark changed to red, and torches shone,
And deafening music shook the leaves; a troop
Shouldered a litter with a wounded man,
Or smote upon the string and to the sound
Sang of the beast that gave the fatal wound.
All stately women moving to a song
With loosened hair or foreheads grief-distraught,
It seemed a Quattrocento painters throng,
A thoughtless image of Mantegnas thought
Why should they think that are for ever young?
Till suddenly in griefs contagion caught,
I stared upon his blood-bedabbled breast
And sang my malediction with the rest.
That thing all blood and mire, that beast-torn wreck,
Half turned and fixed a glazing eye on mine,
And, though loves bitter-sweet had all come back,
Those bodies from a picture or a coin
Nor saw my body fall nor heard it shriek,
Nor knew, drunken with singing as with wine,
That they had brought no fabulous symbol there
But my hearts victim and its torturer.
IX. A LAST CONFESSION
WHAT lively lad most pleasured me
Of all that with me lay?
I answer that I gave my soul
And loved in misery,
But had great pleasure with a lad
That I loved bodily.
Flinging from his arms I laughed
To think his passion such
He fancied that I gave a soul
Did but our bodies touch,
And laughed upon his breast to think
Beast gave beast as much.
I gave what other women gave
«That stepped out of their clothes.
But when this soul, its body off,
Naked to naked goes,
He it has found shall find therein
What none other knows,
And give his own and take his own
And rule in his own right;
And though it loved in misery
Close and cling so tight,
Theres not a bird of day that dare
Extinguish that delight.
X. MEETING
HIDDEN by old age awhile
In maskers cloak and hood,
Each hating what the other loved,
Face to face we stood:
«That I have met with such,» said he,
«Bodes me little good.»
«Let others boast their fill,» said I,
«But never dare to boast
That such as I had such a man
For lover in the past;
Say that of living men I hate
Such a man the most.»
«A loonyd boast of such a love,»
He in his rage declared:
But such as he for such as me
Could we both discard
This beggarly habiliment
Had found a sweeter word.
XI. FROM THE «ANTIGONE»
OVERCOME O bitter sweetness,
Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl
The rich man and his affairs,
The fat flocks and the fields fatness,
Mariners, rough harvesters;
Overcome Gods upon Parnassus;
Overcome the Empyrean; hurl
Heaven and Earth out of their places,
That in the Same calamity
Brother and brother, friend and friend,
Family and family,
City and city may contend,
By that great glory driven wild.
Pray I will and sing I must,
And yet I weep Oedipus child
Descends into the loveless dust.