Мария Визи - A moon gate in my wall: собрание стихотворений

As slaves are driven from behind
with w hip and shouts that don't abate,
so I am goaded by my blind,
my cruel and relentless fate.

In such a servitude and pain
what boundless strengths one must possess
in order not to go insane
or die from hunger and distress!

But as the day grows ever dimmer
it s pierced — so often! — from the skies
by slender wings that lightly shimmer
and luminous transparent eyes.

I die so slowly, crawling, groping…
Yet as I reach the gate of heaven
I know that he will pull it open
and with his wing will help me in.

Don't go away, for I am lost,
stay here, for I am cold;
upon my chest my hands are crossed
that I may not unfold.

I cannot lift my eyes to see,
it's cold, and dark as well.
This cannot be, this cannot be
the bottom of the well…

Never felt I more to be pitied,
ridiculous, clumsy, weak;
I dreamed I was turning blind,
the sky was a blackened streak.

Oh, weight of unseeing sadness,
remembrance of earthly day!
Invisible voices, crying,
ran past me upon their way.

Oh, death without putrefaction,
insatiable worm of night.
I summoned God to redeem me,
but it was you who replied.

The lower your voice, the softer,
the more the answer grew clear:
«My dear, I hear you, I hear you,
there is no salvation, dear!»

It all will be as I have always wished:
over my feet the cover will be white
and white will be the ribbon of the wreath
around my forehead, grown cold and dark.

Keeping my earthly, my familiar look,
three long, three not-to-be-forgotten days
alone upon the table I will lie.
Pompous and solemn, the memorial mass
will be performed above me by the priest
and silently around me there will stand
my family, my enemies, my friends,
and those with whom I lived and whom I'd met;
and the transparent pallor of her face
will lend an added beauty to my wife.

It all will be as I have always wished.

And only you will never have a chance,
in your great longing and your last despair,
to touch my hand, my all but living hand,
to touch already my unseeing eyes.

And even into the wide open church
you will not dare to enter with the rest.
But, waiting for me somewhere on the way,
pressing your hand over your pain-stilled mouth,
you will observe my coffin floating past
silently, in the mist, without a trace…

And at that moment the dead heart in me
will suddenly, in mortal pity, shake,
and you will clearly hear the distant beat
— the beat, so long familiar, of my heart.
But people will not hear a sound.

At last the poem is completed.
The soul is void, the soul is light.
The hand that holds the pen is shaking
as from a giddiness of flight.

The world of phantom, barely seen,
swaying, recedes into the gloom;
out of the darkness Earth arises
steadfast and ponderous as doom.

As only on a sheet of paper
a mark, unsure and indistinct,
reflects the light which fell from heaven
in smallest drops of drying ink.

And now the heart beats faster, weary,
as if beyond some starry goal
running across the plains of heaven
the body too had chased the soul.

Burn in the foggy whiteness, burn,
burn in the fog of icy skies,
lighting the murky twilight stillness
with your bright body as it flies.

And soaring from the crowded heaven,
enter my crowding prison walls
through the slit window, like a bird,
to visit me when evening falls.

Soaring above decay and coldness,
incomprehensible, though near,
glide, circling from the vaulted ceiling
down to the dusty corners here,

that — even for the briefest moment!
and though I burn my fingers through —
I am allowed, in sweetest torment,
to touch the body that is you.

Enormous world, embraced by sleep and dusk,
in which we live so close we gasp for breath
not guessing the beginning or the end,
dreaming of happiness which conquers death.

This indestructible, poor mortal land!
But close your eyes: another lies beyond —
A world in which you are a midnight star
immobile in its speechlessness and bright,

— a world in which I am a limpid pool
whose face reflects your ever-shining light.
Above this world, that other will appear —
that's quite transparent, and quite simply clear.

A graceful swan that's slowly gliding
upon the mirror of the lake,
a falcon in the clouds abiding —
my dream-invented world is riding
in phantom imagery's wake.

Between its wings, unfurled and gleaming,
I slowly drift, not knowing where,
sweetly and languorously dreaming,
regretting nothing, nor redeeming,
melting in this transparent air.

And this prophetic voice of mine,
voice of my soul in dream's embrace,
above abysmal darkness flying,
is echoed hollowly, and, dying,
it disappears without a trace.

They will live very crowded — this Earth like a jail they will crowd,
Cod and hell and eternity even they all will deny,
and their houses of steel and concrete will reach up to the cloud,
and a huge zeppelin to the farthermost planet will fly.

And when over this world that is whirling the trumpet does sound,
and the firmament over this Earth opens wide like a gate,
and the lights all go out, and the graves open up in the ground,
none will then understand what is meant or believe anymore.

At midnight, when the pallid moon,
shivering as from cold and pain,
within its bluish aureole
soars upward past your windowpane,

when burnt by the celestial cold
silently floating in the dark
its rays that shimmer in the night
are barely heard above the park,

then, through the stillness and the dream,
in all your grief of long ago,
you will approach your windowsill
and push the panes apart and go

out of the darkness gliding up
a path by human eyes unseen
on which your foot will never slip
nor will you falter or careen.

And in the ringing solitude
with hand outstretched and sleeping eyes
heavy and cumbersome and slow
above the darkness you will rise

until from out the icy space,
the earthly blackness void and still,
some reveller's nocturnal voice
suddenly rises sharp and shrill.

Then, jolted, will the heavens rock
and swim, and lights go out that shone,
and dead onto the stones below
the moon will tumble like a stone.

Akhmatova, Ivanov, Mandelshtam —
forgotten notebook I have rescued here —
«Hyperboreus» — home for transient verse
of youthful poets in that happy year.

I found it at the bottom of a trunk
among my dusty archives lost retreat.
And forty year — is that not ancient yet?
To have survived so long — not yet a feat?

«October. Notebook Light. Nineteen Thirteen».
Year of the sunset, last bright, carefree year.
For all that followed was not life at all,
but time of reckoning, reprisal, fear.

This notebook — witness of a golden age,
these pages — that escaped the lethal stream!
I open it, I read — my eyes are wet, —
how young the poems, young the poets seem!

And I — how old! How wasted all these years!
How dark ahead what — emptiness behind!
What awesome thought — that not a trace of me
will anyone, in any notebook find!