A moongate in my wall: собрание стихотворений - [57]

with well-earned mirth

which sly time pilfered on your withering earth!

Dance in the tear-soaked grass

dangling each tinkling somewhere-living heart

as void eyes dart

to where the stolid unbelieving old

grow by the snarling oak roots in a silent mold

buried en masse.

Disdain and disregard the sod-bound throng.

There is a song

composed about you and your life goes on

dancing long nights upon a moonstained lawn.

30 Oct. 1958

532. «Suddenly, I'm awake…»

Suddenly, I'm awake —

now, when my heart is sagging

and when my death, set for the take,

creaks round the nearest hill in her sure wagon.

Quite unexpectedly, the sky blows warm

as when cold day

breathes sudden fire instead

after a powerful and all-uprooting storm

risen from its day bed.

And as I stand

groping and reaching with my lips and hand,

mouth open in an agony of wanting

to fling long smouldering words that have been haunting

my loosely used, oh, many-wasted lips,

— I see the sun that dips

into the catchall of horizon and I flay

the sunless air to hold the night at bay

and rise and leave

the rock I stand on as I reach the eave

of the lowering, blackening sky above my head —

and I am dead.

30 Oct. 1958

533. Lot's Wife [238]

I am Lot's wife. I couldn't walk away

up foreign sands, away from that poor land

where every stone was warm from my own touch

and every door and window held my shadow,

where I had walked those narrow streets of Sodom.

There I had lived among familiar people

and talked and had my various human dealings

with neighbor women and with men who traded

and knew me well and knew my husband Lot.

Though truly they had differed with our thoughts

and knew not God as Lot and I had known Him

and wouldn't listen to His words of warnings,

— they weren't worse than I: I didn't listen.

I couldn't follow Lot on that safe trail

hearing the wrath of vengeance on my town,

hearing the fall of rocks and quake of hillside,

hearing the roar of all-devouring flame,

the crying agony of men and women:

I couldn't run away: I stopped and turned —

What matter that the price I paid was life,

was immortality?

Perhaps in that brief moment

some friend or enemy before he died

breathed easier because he glimpsed, half-blinded,

through fire and smoke, beneath a fallen pillar,

my shaking arms stretched in a last farewell?

1958

534. «Come to classroom, padre, while the students…»

Come to classroom, padre, while the students

are not yet gathered for their next assignment.

Come with me, padre, I will show you something

for which I beg you to donate a moment.

Your brothers, padre! See, — upon the tables —

laid out and all prepared to be dissected.

Oh, yours and mine. Just shut the door now, quiet…

The overburdened, very good professor

is right now having one last cup of coffee

within the fold of his distinguished household.

There — long, grey-white ones. How they must have worried

and how they must be cold in this dank classroom.

This is my thought (— will you forgive me, padre,

for buttonholing you between the wardroom s

where you disseminated consolation —)

— This is my thought: perhaps they had no kinfolk

to say goodbye and tuck them in for sleeping.

Perhaps you missed them as they lay there dying.

You and your colleagues; stand here in the doorway

and make a sign above these proud dead people,

say a few words, — because you have connections —

to make it dignified, this their departure,

as their last bell rings and their train pulls out.

(This is not the beginning:)

The quiet one are lying on their tables,

all wrapped in white, all swaddled white like babies

(born just a life ago, just a life, — whither is it gone

now, that they are speechless, motionless,

sightless, loveless, selfless?)

Suddenly a fire alarm sounds.

Noiselessly then the people wrapped in white,

white-swaddled, shoeless, soundless, faceless, warily

step one by one onto the fire escape

and slither down, procession wise, to safety

one after one, pouring from out their window

winding lightly down, white sheets that wrap them trailing;

down the black crooked iron stairway

comes the procession, in disorted angels

showing no faces —

to escape the fire.

piched the ground, the earth, the safety,

And, having reached the ground, the earth, the safety

they stop and stand and stare in scared amazement —

What do they do now? Whither do they slither?

Now they are safe, in what direction do they turn?

1958

535. Imitation [239]

A rose quartz vase shone on her dresser, and

the sandalwood immortals stood, all seven,

imported from a pine and dragon land

once governed by the Son of Heaven.

Upon her cold blue wall

was hung a single silken-tasseled scroll

brush-painted on parchment,

with craggy mountains and a waterfall

— the prized possession of her studio apartment.

And, head benignly bowed, Kwan-Yin in jade

graced her teak night stand and her mystic soul.

Yet somehow this decor forever made

the impression of stage props for a miscast role.

As if these things were images in a glass

that traveling by reflect their face and pass

— a hollow echo's alien report

from a forbidden city's empty court.

536. «Once on the Moika lived a man…» [240]

Once on the Moika lived a man —