Стихотворения - [10]

Zurich, 1918

БАНХОФШТРАССЕ

Глумливых взглядов череда

Ведет меня сквозь города.

Сквозь сумрак дня, сквозь ночи синь

Мерцает мне звезда полынь.

О светоч ада! светоч зла!

И молодость моя прошла,

И старой мудрости оплот

Не защитит и не спасет.

Цюрих, 1918

A PRAYER

Again!

Come, give, yield all your strength to me!

From far a low word breathes on the breaking brain

Its cruel calm, submission's misery,

Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined.

Cease, silent love! My doom!

Blind me with your dark nearness, О have mercy,

beloved enemy of my will!

I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread.

Draw from me still

My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening head,

Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying

Him who is, him who was!

Again!

Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth. I hear

From far her low word breathe on my breaking brain.

Come! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am here.

Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only anguish,

Take me, save me, soothe me, О spare me!

Paris, 1924

МОЛЬБА

Вот снова!

Приди, отдай мне все, ты — мой!

Зовет из мрака вкрадчивое слово

С жестокой силой, с кротостью слепой,

Как бы смиряя ужас в обреченном.

Молчи, любовь! Мой рок!

Накрой меня своею темнотой, о, сжалься,

враг мой милый!

Невыносимым хладом лба коснись,

Вытягивай живые жилы

Из сердца! Ниже, ниже наклонись,

Грозя и муча, мстя и сострадая

За все, чем стал, чем был!

Вот снова!

Из шелеста ночного, ветрового, из тьмы, что впереди,

Зовет чуть слышно вкрадчивое слово,

Терзая слух и мозг: приди, приди!

Я здесь. Я — твой, блаженный мой мучитель!

Прими, утешь, спаси! О, пощади!

Париж, 1924

Стихи на случай

THE HOLY OFFICE

Myself unto myself will give

This name Katharsis-Purgative.

I, who disheveled ways forsook

To hold the poets' grammar-book,

Bringing to tavern and to brothel

The mind of witty Aristotle,

Lest bards in the attempt should err

Must here be my interpreter:

Wherefore receive now from my lip

Peripatetic scholarship.

To enter heaven, travel hell,

Be piteous or terrible

One positively needs the ease,

Of plenary indulgences.

For every true-born mysticist

A Dante is, unprejudiced,

Who safe at ingle-nook, by proxy,

Hazards extremes of heterodoxy,

Like him who finds a joy at table

Pondering the uncomfortable.

Ruling one's life by common sense

How can one fail to be intense?

But I must not accounted be

One of that mumming company

With him who hies him to appease

His giddy dames' frivolities

While they console him when he whinges

With gold-embroidered Celtic fringes —

Or him who sober all the day

Mixes a naggin in his play —

Or him who conduct 'seems to own',

His preference for a man of 'tone' —

Or him who plays the rugged patch

To millionaires in Hazelhatch

But weeping after holy fast

Confesses all his pagan past —

Or him who will his hat unfix

Neither to malt nor crucifix

But show to all that poor-dressed be

His high Castilian courtesy —

Or him who loves his Master dear —

Or him who drinks his pint in fear —

Or him who once when snug abed

Saw Jesus Christ without his head

And tried so hard to win for us

The long-lost works of Eschylus.

But all these men of whom I speak

Make me the sewer of their clique.

That they may dream their dreamy dreams

I carry off their filthy streams

For I can do those things for them

Through which I lost my diadem,

Those things for which Grandmother Church

Left me severely in the lurch.

Thus I relieve their timid arses,

Perform my office of Katharsis.

My scarlet leaves them white as wool

Through me they purge a bellyful.

To sister mummers one and all

I act as vicar-general

And for each maiden, shy and nervous,

I do a similar kind service.

For I detect without surprise

That shadowy beauty in her eyes,

The 'dare not' of sweet maidenhood

That answers my corruptive would'.

Whenever publicly we meet

She never seems to think of it;

At night when close in bed she lies

And feels my hand between her thighs

My little love in light attire

Knows the soft flame that is desire.

But Mammon places under ban

The uses of Leviathan

And that high spirit ever wars

On Mammon's countless servitors

Nor can they ever be exempt

From his taxation of contempt.

So distantly I turn to view

The shamblings of that motley crew,

Those souls that hate the strength that mine has

Steeled in the school of old Aquinas.

Where they have crouched and crawled and prayed

I stand the self-doomed, unafraid,

Unfellowed, friendless and alone,

Indifferent as the herring-bone,

Firm as the mountain-ridges where

I flash my antlers on the air.

Let them continue as is meet

To adequate the balance-sheet.

Though they may labour to the grave

My spirit shall they never have

Nor make my soul with theirs at one

Till the Mahamanvantara be done:

And though they spurn me from their door

My soul shall spurn them evermore.

(August 1904)

СВЯТАЯ МИССИЯ

Я — катарсис. Я — очищенье.

Сие — мое предназначенье.

Я не магическая призма,

Но очистительная клизма.

Оцените ль, друзья, поймете ль,

Как мил мне древний Аристотель?

Я проституток и кутил

Перипатетике учил.

Мой образ мыслей не обычен,

А крайне перипатетичен,

Но толковать меня не надо.

Сам изложу свои я взгляды.

Итак, любому, полагаю,

Стремись он к аду или раю,

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