Зимородок - [12]

Он прожил жизнь бараном,

Бараном, бараном.

А стал он барабаном,

Служителем искусств.

            БУМ!

Бьёт ария фонтаном

Из бюста сопрано.

Но не для барабана

Колоратура чувств.

            БУМ!

Выходит бас усатый —

Рокочут раскаты.

Нет, голос в три обхвата

Не ценит барабан.

            БУМ!

Но тенор, слух лелея,

Овцою заблеет,

И барабан весь млеет,

И вот он вновь баран.

            Бе-е-е-е…

Instead of a love poem English language poems

Instead of a love poem

I do not set my poems to orbit around you.

I carve a long arm out of words

To scratch an unreachable itch.

I force my breath through a broken branch

That is hollow and drilled full of holes.

I cling to the metaphor —

A slender bridge

Above a churning abyss.

What is the need for me

To spell out your name

When my moist whisper

Pours it into your ear?

Why perfume paper with words,

When, thinking “He likes coriander,”

I stretch my hand to the spice rack?

Translating Akhmatova

Her shadow still appears…

Anna Akhmatova

Her world is gone… But in the midnight mirror

Her presence stirs and bends the steady flame.

Her gaze meets mine. My trembling arms reach forward.

How heavy is the mantle of her name!

I sing the soaring spiral of her passion,

Whisper her terror and confess her sin.

My spirit dances, catching like a spindle

The golden thread her phantom fingers spin.

Emily Dickinson’s garden, twilight

Miss Dickinson,

Your garden is lovely in the twilight.

The oak tree by your house

Is larger and shadier

Than it was in your day.

Much has changed:

The view from your window,

The world beyond, the language.

Still, the feeling of longing

Remains the same: a long line of silk

That the soul pulls out of itself,

Like a spider spinning her thread in the autumn,

Hoping to catch not food, but the wind,

Hoping to travel far

Without knowing the destination.

«There is a poem that stalks and evades me…»

* * *

There is a poem that stalks and evades me.

I do not know its words, can't remember

Whether I read it a long time ago,

Whether it’s me who is trying to write it.

I am not sure what it is about.

I think a wolf might live in it somewhere;

I saw her tracks in the grainy snow.

I nearly glimpsed her face in the shadows

Peering at me from behind the birches.

I hear the burbling of running water

Crisscrossing the silence,

The sudden clatter

Of a woodpecker's exuberant drum roll.

I smell wet bark.

The sap must be rising.

Decay and growth are fermenting together;

It's early spring in a faraway forest.

Do not torment me like this, I beg you!

I am worn out by the chase and the longing

For that spring in that watchful forest;

For that moment when words surrender.

Elephant Shrew

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

Henry Van Dyke

Let me not be abashed by the smallness of my gift.

Let me not be stricken mute by the delight

Of soaring on the wings of a song far greater than mine,

By the breathtaking majesty of the world

Seen from that height.

Should a carver of netsuke despair

After seeing Michelangelo’s David?

Should painting Easter eggs be abandoned as worthless craft

Because its materials are ephemeral,

Because its creations

Will never be displayed on velvet

Next to Faberge eggs?

An elephant shrew is needed by the savannah

As she is,

Just as worthy of life as an elephant.

There is no need to judge

What makes them different,

What makes them akin.

«At the first tingling of a poem…»

These are tricky poems to find; they are the subtle hum in your notebook….

Natalie Goldberg

* * *

At the first tingling of a poem,

Pounce upon the sensation.

Scratch it hard,

Like a kid

Absorbed in the first mosquito bite of the season.

Scratch, tear, let it become a frenzy, a fury.

Draw blood.

Do not worry about whether anyone

Will ever read your words.

At this moment,

The universe tastes your salt.

Message

This message

Must cross a great distance,

Take an uncharted path

To reach you.

You and I live

Under different constellations,

My now will be

Your long time ago.

I must be brief.

A handful of lines

Has to encompass

Vast plains

Of smooth moonlit snow,

A river asleep under the ice;

Let you glimpse

The dark window,

The small flame of longing

That dances

With a tendril of its own smoke

For a partner.

And suddenly it is here,

That moment when our hands

Touch for a heartbeat.

The heat of your fingers

Lights a beacon

That will not go out.

My words in your palm

Melt into clear water.

Encounter

A muscular, thick-pelted woodchuck, created in yield, in abandon, lifts onto his haunches.

…

In Russian, the translator told me, there is no word for “thirsty”…

Jane Hirshfield

I watch the thick-pelted woodchuck

Waddle across the poem.

Alert, yet oblivious to the attention

Of both the poet and the reader,

He pauses, lifts onto his haunches

Then plunges into a thicket of ferns,

Vanishing into a space that opens

Beyond the boundaries of words.

The stream that flows across the line-breaks

Has its wellspring in that same landscape.

Mirrored in the rippling water

I glimpse a face that seems oddly familiar.

Perhaps it is my own reflection.

But it breaks up and disappears

Too quickly for me to know for sure.

How unreachable and alluring