Мария Визи - A moongate in my wall: собрание стихотворений

By the starry sky and my own soul
You proclaim that You indeed exist.

As an infant blind from the beginning,
never having known his mother's face,
yet remembers whispering and singing,
hands caressing tenderly and bringing
gentle warmth and never-ending grace,
so do I, not having ever seen You,
know You, feel Your breath from where I stand,
hear Your song, Your whisper understand,
and against all human earthly reason
recognize the warmth that is Your hand.

Of course, it's fair! Not in the present
the end of which it cannot see
and not in that which it bewails
or does not have the strength to be.

But in the changing succession
of suddenly bedazzled days,
its gift of momentary gladness
the transient kindness of its ways.

So all around us, and forever:
under a dagger's constant aim
people will kiss and gather flowers
and build their houses just the same.

In spite of all the grief of partings,
of all the hands wrung in despair,
of all premeditated falsehood,
it still will be forever fair!

Children are taught in textbooks
that stars are so far away —
I somehow never believed them,
those things they used to say.

I used to love as a child
to stay awake in bed:
and stars would ever so lightly
rain tinkling round my head.

From the blackened boughs of chestnuts
I would shake them down to the sand,
and, filling my pockets with them,
could buy the wealth of the land.

Since then I've been mean and stingy,
— oh heart! — but, forsaking youth,
I never forgot, growing older,
my childhood's merry truth.

We live low down on the ground
and the sky is so far, and yet —
I know that the stars are near us
and can be easily met.

In your plain little coat and kerchief,
so familiar and dear, you stand,
the key to our promised heaven
you hold in your empty hand.

Let's set out once again together!
The hills ever darker grow.
Does it matter that we are tired?
We've so little left to go.

If only we're never parted
in the lonely course of our fate,
if we only have strength together
to reach the Highest Gate!

Once again, let us bless each other
as we used to, and never fear —
they will let us enter together,
that's long been decided, dear.

Guided by some lightly winging spirit
far beyond the sea the birds have flown.
On this dark and bleak November morning,
why do you and I stay home alone?

Maybe we should follow — take a knapsack,
staff and flask, some good and trusted books,
and pursue the swiftly flying swallows
over woods and meadowlands and brooks?

Only those who linger are un able
to partake of joys on Earth arrayed.
Every turnpike, boundary and barrier
we would pass, unseen and unafraid.

Surely then, at break of day tomorrow
you and I would reach the rosy haze
over gleaming rocks and crested breakers,
slender palms, and golden blessed days!

And as surely, to the fullest measure,
we who dared would be repaid indeed
for the grain of utter faith within us,
for that single mustard seed!

When I was a boy I used to be your friend,
beautiful town of parks and lonely statues,
dense lilac groves and empty palaces, —
you hadn't yet been visited by grief.
Your Gumileff was still a carefree youth,
Akhmatova — a schoolgirl and in love,
and Innokenti Annensky had not
died suffocating at your railroad station;
even your Pushkin used to seem to me
not dead, but living, not yet grown up,
but just another of my noisy classmates.

Decades have passed. Impossible to count
your losses. All your palaces now lie
decaying. All your poets have been killed
by silence, bullet, or complete contempt.
Alone the name of Pushkin, as of old,
still shines above you like a glorious promise
— a token of the coming future truth.

There s such a wealth of beauty in the world:
a maiden’s breast, a flying eagle's wing,
loaf of a maple, sunrise in Rialto,
a lily-of-the-valley in the spring;

a leaping doe; the Milky Way, a sail,
the Volga's great expanse, a child's eyes…
You see yourself: too many things to mention
for you and me to count or to surmise.

And yet is life not easier for knowing
that everywhere around you children roam,
and maples grow, and there are waves, and maidens,
or simply someone's garden and a home?

You say to me: All that is transient, passing!
But you are wrong! Next spring, in that green bower,
another doe will leap again, as lightly,
and underfoot will bloom another flower!

Our world is ill. It whispers invocations
and tries to smother what in life is true.
But nowhere in it stands a ruined building
where grass will not come up anew.

No pebble in ravenna's sculptured tomb,
nor crimson paint-dab in the Vatican, —
I merely was a wisp of merry spume
upon the ocean's blue and distant span.

But when a sail came toward me, I would swirl
to meet it; I have played with reefs near land,
caressed the body of a sun-tanned girl,
and, tired, dug into the golden sand.

My fleeting course no great event did jar;
for one chance moment was my fate unfurled,
yet I was happier and richer far
than all the tombs and castles of the world.

Dry the source that ran in the ravine.
Hot the noon. But take a look again:
in the hollow stump, some moisture still —
fusty water left there by the rain.

Playing with your twig — be very careful
not ot splash it out around the brink —
even though it's pitifully scanty,
someone still may need it for a drink!

After dawn tomorrow some small creature —
squirrel, hedgehog — may come by this rill
and may drink. You too — who knows what happens? —
yet may taste it in a final thrill.

It's hardest of all to say goodbye,
it is best to be alone to die.
For no one at all to be near, instead
just an empty room, a chair, a bed,
not to see anyone sadly weep,
not to have any small dog creep
from under your bed to lick your cheek,
or a sun ray come through a crack and peek,
or a butterfly dart in the window So
may it not be spring when I have to go!
May I die in the night! When a single star
may fall… and another… again… How far
easier, maybe, to go away
down such an
utterly
empty
way.

I lost them all along the way,
those words 1 failed to clothe in sound.
Like swallows on a winter day,
never again can they be found.

I didn't show them much concern,
so they departed, taking wing.
And yet perhaps they will return
to others, in some future spring?

Yes, now it's empty here… His silhouette is gone,
it isn't at the desk, nor in the easy-chair.
I his stillness! And the thought that he is here no more
How can you justify, how can you call it fair?

And yet — don't weep! And leave this vacant room!
Go down the stairs, stand by the window-pane,
look hard into the fading blue of dawn.
You see — that's he, there, striding down the lane!

Don't try to call — you cannot bring him back!
But know: he lives, his life will never end.
He had been visiting, and has gone off once more.
Listen — he's singing! Far…around the bend.