Author: mme-n-b

1. My wife and I, in one romantic cot

“My wife and I, in one romantic cot,
The world forgetting, by the world forgot,
Or high as the gods upon Olympus dwell,
Pleased with what things we have, and pleased as well
To wait in hope for those which we have not.

She vows in ardour for a horse to trot;
I stake my votive prayers upon a yacht.
Which shall be first remembered, who can tell,—
My wife or I?

Harvests of flowers o’er all our garden plot,
She dreams; and I to enrich a darker spot,—
My unprovided cellar. Both to swell
Our narrow cottage huge as a hotel,
Where portly friends may come and share the lot
Of wife and I.

2. My Wife

“Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
  With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
  Steel-true and blade-straight,
  The great artificer
  Made my mate.

  Honour, anger, valour, fire;
  A love that life could never tire,
  Death quench or evil stir,
  The mighty master
  Gave to her.

  Teacher, tender comrade, wife,
  A fellow-farer true through life,
  Heart-whole and soul-free
  The august father
  Gave to me.

I do not know how, but despite innumerable allusions I’ve never actually read the poem itself. It’s far scarier than I expected, and I expected something as scary as My Last Duchess.

1.

My first thought was, he lied in every word,

    That hoary cripple, with malicious eye

    Askance to watch the working of his lie

On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford

Suppression of the glee that pursed and scored

    Its edge at one more victim gained thereby.

2.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?

    What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare

    All travellers who might find him posted there,

And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh

Would break, what crutch ‘gin write my epitaph

    For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

3.

If at his counsel I should turn aside

    Into that ominous tract which, all agree,

    Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly

I did turn as he pointed; neither pride

Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,

    So much as gladness that some end might be.

4.

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,

    What with my search drawn out thro’ years, my hope

    Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope

With that obstreperous joy success would bring,—

I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring

    My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

5.

As when a sick man very near to death

    Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end

    The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,

And hears one bid the other go, draw breath

Freelier outside, (“since all is o’er” he saith,

    “And the blow fall’n no grieving can amend”)

6.

While some discuss if near the other graves

    Be room enough for this, and when a day

    Suits best for carrying the corpse away,

With care about the banners, scarves and staves,—

And still the man hears all, and only craves

    He may not shame such tender love and stay.

7.

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,

   Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ

   So many times among “The Band”—to wit,

The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed

Their steps—that just to fail as they, seemed best,

   And all the doubt was now—should I be fit.

8.

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,

    That hateful cripple, out of his highway

    Into the path he pointed. All the day

Had been a dreary one at best, and dim

Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim

    Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

9.

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found

    Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,

    Than pausing to throw backward a last view

To the safe road, ’twas gone! gray plain all round!

Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.

    I might go on; nought else remained to do.

10.

So, on I went. I think I never saw

    Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:

    For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove!

But cockle, spurge, according to their law

Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,

    You’d think: a burr had been a treasure-trove.

11.

No! penury, inertness, and grimace,

    In some strange sort, were the land’s portion. “See

    Or shut your eyes,” —said Nature peevishly—

“It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:

The Judgment’s fire must cure this place,

    Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”

12.

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk

    Above its mates, the head was chopped—the bents

    Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents

In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves—bruised as to baulk

All hope of greenness? ’tis a brute must walk

    Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.

13.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair

    In leprosy—thin dry blades pricked the mud

    Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.

One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,

Stood stupefied, however he came there—

    Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!

14.

Alive? he might be dead for all I know,

    With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,

    And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane.

Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe:

I never saw a brute I hated so—

    He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

15.

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.

   As a man calls for wine before he fights,

   I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,

Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.

Think first, fight afterwards—the soldier’s art:

   One taste of the old time sets all to rights!

16.

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face

    Beneath its garniture of curly gold,

    Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold

An arm in mine to fix me to the place,

That way he used. Alas! one night’s disgrace!

    Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.

17.

Giles, then, the soul of honour—there he stands

   Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.

   What honest men should dare (he said) he durst.

Good—but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman’s

Pin to his breast a parchment? His own hands

   Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

18.

Better this present than a past like that—

    Back therefore to my darkening path again.

    No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.

Will the night send a howlet or a bat?

I asked: when something on the dismal flat

    Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

19.

A sudden little river crossed my path

   As unexpected as a serpent comes.

   No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms—

This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath

For the fiend’s glowing hoof—to see the wrath

   Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

20.

So, petty yet so spiteful! all along

    Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;

    Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit

Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:

The river which had done them all the wrong,

    Whate’er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

21.

Which, while I forded,—good saints, how I feared

   To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,

   Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek

For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!

—It may have been a water-rat I speared,

   But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek.

22.

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.

   Now for a better country. Vain presage!

   Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage

Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank

Soil to a plash? toads in a poisoned tank,

   Or wild cats in a redhot iron cage—

23.

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.

    What kept them there, with all the plain to choose?

    No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,

None out of it: mad brewage set to work

Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk

    Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

24.

And more than that—a furlong on—why, there!

   What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,

   Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel

Men’s bodies out like silk? with all the air

Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware,

   Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

25.

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,

    Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth

    Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,

Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood

Changes and off he goes!) within a rood

    Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.

26.

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,

    Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s

    Broke into moss or substances like boils;

Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him

Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim

    Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

27.

And just as far as ever from the end!

   Nought in the distance but the evening, nought,

   To point my footstep further! At the thought,

A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend,

Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned

   That brushed my cap—perchance the guide I sought.

28.

For, looking up aware I somehow grew,

   ‘Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place

   All round to mountains—with such name to grace

Mere ugly heights and heaps now stol’n in view.

How thus they had surprised me,—solve it, you!

   How to get from them was no plainer case.

29.

Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick

   Of mischief happened to me, God knows when—

   In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,

Progress this way. When, in the very nick

Of giving up, one time more, came a click

   As when a trap shuts—you’re inside the den!

30.

Burningly it came on me all at once,

    This was the place! those two hills on the right

    Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight—

While to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . Dunce,

Fool, to be dozing at the very nonce,

    After a life spent training for the sight!

31.

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?

    The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,

    Built of brown stone, without a counterpart

In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf

Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf

    He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

32.

Not see? because of night perhaps?—Why, day

   Came back again for that! before it left,

   The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:

The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay—

Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—

   “Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!”

33.

Not hear? when noise was everywhere? it tolled

   Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears,

   Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—

How such an one was strong, and such was bold,

And such was fortunate, yet each of old

   Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

34.

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides—met

   To view the last of me, a living frame

   For one more picture! in a sheet of flame

I saw them and I knew them all. And yet

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set

   And blew. “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

“Линор Горалик

Нет разницы, нет разницы, Аленка.
Твои мертвы, мои убиты горем,
тебе не больно, мне невыносимо,
тебе двенадцать, мне чуть больше трех, –
но вот мы делим яблоко одно
на этой двухминутной переменке, –
сплошной огрызок, твердое, как камень,
но слаще заказных наивных месс
(твои католики, мои придурки).

Последний день, но нам с тобой плевать,
хотя, казалось, мы должны молиться,
гадать, дрожать, подсчитывать грехи,
сдыхать и воскресать от слуха к слуху
о том, кого куда переведут, –
но мы с тобой ушли на подоконник, –
ты ерзаешь, я потною ладошкой
держу тебя за серый воротник,
стараясь не упасть с твоих коленок,
и мы мусолим нашу сигарету,
и я пускаю дым тебе за ухо,
во вмятину, оставленную балкой.

Когда ты в них стреляла, в маму с папой, –
Когда потом взошла на подоконник, –
Когда я шла, куда мне не велели, –
Когда Алеша шел гулять без шарфа, –
Когда Джером бросался под колеса, –
Когда Наташа бабушке хамила, –
Когда Асим взрывал тяжелый пояс, –
Когда Эжен шел к братику с подушкой, –
Когда Илья пошел за этим типом, –
Когда Элен играла зажигалкой, –
Когда Варфоломей поймал котенка, –

нам всем тогда черемухой запахло:
Эжену, Тане, мне, Варфоломею,
Ирине, Аде, и, представь, Илье,
которого тот тип как раз в кустах,
как раз черемухи, – но даже он
сквозь кровь и тряпки смог учуять запах.

Такая, видишь, выдалась минута.
Такой момент в истории черемух.

I really don’t like remembering this poem, but it comes up in my memory regularly, much like, apparently, сосновый бор в покинутом Цуну.

E. E. Cummings

Buffalo Bill ’s
defunct
               who used to
               ride a watersmooth-silver
                                                                  stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                                                                     Jesus

he was a handsome man 
                                                  and what i want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death

George Sterling

At the end of our streets is sunrise;
At the end of our streets are spars;
At the end of our streets is sunset;
At the end of our streets the stars.

Ever the winds of morning
Are cool from the flashing sea–
Flowing swift from our ocean,
Till the fog-dunes crumble and flee.

Slender spars in the offing,
Mast and yard in the slips–
How they tell on the azure
Of the sea-contending ships!

Homeward into the sunset
Sill unwearied we go,
Till the northern hills are misty
With the amber of afterglow.

Stars that sink to our ocean,
Winds that visit our strand,
The heavens are your pathway,
Where is a gladder land!

At the end of our streets is sunrise;
At the end of our streets are spars;
At the end of our streets is sunset;
At the end of our streets the stars.

Although I conquer all the earth,
Yet for me there is only one city.
In that city there is for me only one house;
And in that house, one room only;
And in that room a bed.
And one woman sleeps there,
The shining joy and jewel of all my kingdom.

King Amaru of Kashmir, translated by Andrew Schelling from Sanskrit

In The Summer

In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.

Nizar Qabbani

В этот день

В ночь с 20 на 21 декабря 1936 года
в окно к учительнице математики
влетает шаровая молния.
Зависает над столом
и интересуется:

-Ты зачем мною людей пугаешь?
Учительница нехотя откладывает
домашние работы –
прекрасный ровный свет,
практически дневной,
это вам не керосинка,
вот под таким бы и проверять…
Демаскировки она не боится:
все знают, в вёске должна быть ведьма.
И потом – кому жаловаться?

«В ночь с 5 на 6 января 1937 года, –
издевательски цитирует мячик, –
то бишь, в день переписи населения, –
«будет летать огненный змей,
который будет спрашивать,
кто за советскую власть, кто против.
Тех, которые скажут, что за большевиков,
тех змей будет записывать…»

-Это теперь тебе так стучат? –
серая короткая стрижка,
узкие губы, круглые очки,
невидимка, камешек, кремешек на дороге.
Если ударить железом,
проскочит искра.
Если не ударить…

-Это теперь в НКВД так стучат, – сообщает змей. –
А я читаю.
Они не экономят на электричестве.

-Я, – отзывается учительница, –
предупредила тут кое-кого,
чтобы во время переписи
не трепали лишнего.
Особенно о соседях.
Мол, сами понимаете, у нас не Минск
и сказанное слышат не только органы.

Рыжий шар знает: на трасянке,
густой, как туман над болотом,
оно звучало совсем иначе.
Но кивает и опускается
в гостеприимно предложенное блюдечко с чаем,
испаряя кирпичную воду без сахара.
С чернилами в последнее время стало лучше.
С чаем – не особенно.

-Придут? – спрашивает учительница.

-Обязательно. – и поясняет. –
Перепись же. Они себе предсказали
сказочный рост населения.
А увидят то, что здесь было все эти годы.
Не поверят.
Пойдут искать вредителей.

-Чёрт. – говорит учительница.
И даже не извиняется.

-Уезжай. – подтверждает змей. – Прямо сейчас.
До переписи. Сибирь там, Казахстан.
Ближе нельзя. Ближе… все закрыто.

-В тридцать первом ты говорил мне другое.

-В тридцать первом было чем им помочь.

Учительница глотает «теперь – нет»,
отхлебывает воду с привкусом дыма и торфа.
Она – ровесница века
и до своих тридцати шести дожила
на умении видеть, считать, делать выводы,
на умении выйти, не обернувшись,
и на некоторых иных умениях,
о которых и днем не стоит.

-Присмотрись к председателю ячейки. –
советует она змею, –
Он, конечно, городской-партейный, но и я-то…
Он может тебя услышать.

-Попробую. – неуверенно отвечает змей
и дело тут явно не в сомнительной кандидатуре
председателя партячейки.

-Что? – резко спрашивает учительница, – Что случилось?

Потому что «придут» – это не «случилось».
Это ожидаемо, привычно, предсказуемо.
Вопрос времени.

-Я теряю себя. – говорит змей. –
Умирают тут слишком много.
А будут больше.
Раньше хоть деваться было некуда.
Поплачешь год-другой,
и сам собой склеишься обратно.
А теперь можно течь по проводам,
источать свет, двигать машины,
сразу все хорошо,
все правильно, как в раю.
Даже лучше – не надо дышать и помнить.
Я к женщинам вашим залетать перестал,
а ведь прекрасней нет ничего на свете…
Имя твое в сводке увидел с третьего раза.
Первые два пропустил.
Был занят. Светил им.
Им светил, понимаешь?
Я не знаю, насколько меня еще хватит.

-Уходи со мной. – предлагает учительница.

-Не поможет. Соскользну, увлекусь, забуду.

-Уходи во мне.

Шаровая молния поднимается в воздух,
слои и слои силы, огня и смерти…

-А что, если я обманываю?
Ты впустишь, я займу твое место,
начну тебя двигать, жить тобою?

-Мне было семнадцать, – улыбается учительница, –
когда началась война.
Мне было двадцать два, когда она не закончилась.
Расскажи мне, чего я не видела… и не делала?

Она встаёт, расправляет плечи,
слои и слои силы, огня и смерти…
И протягивает руку.

Через три с половиной минуты,
через вечность

-Вот значит как, – говорит учительница,
сложным движением сводя за спиной
все три пары крыльев.

Она все еще трезво оценивает свои силы
и не рассчитывает обратить вспять
движение целой страны,
но всегда есть кто-то,
кто может выжить здесь и сейчас,
если вовремя протянуть руку.

И пока она проверяет оставшиеся задания
(это нужно сделать в любом случае)
в глазах ее разгорается
тяжелый медленный свет –
тот самый, из-за которого ангелы
входили к дочерям человеческим.

When I eat melons
My children come to my mind;
When I eat chestnuts
The longing is even worse.
Where do they come from,
Flickering before my eyes,
Making me helpless
Endlessly night after night.
Not letting me sleep in peace?

Japan, 660ish-733ish, spent a lot of his time on missions to China, governed provinces, tutored a prince. Wrote poems.

Елена Михайлик: Мандельштам был рассеян и всех постоянно путал…

One of my favorite poets and one of my favorite fantasy writers.