''Softer now, praise!..''
Softer now, praise!
Don't slam the door,
Fame!
An elbow
- And a table's corner.
Hubbub, stop!
Heart - get calm!
Elbow - and brow.
Elbow - and thought.
Youth - for to love,
Old age - to get warm:
No time - to be,
Nowhereto go.
If even a nook -
Away from the rest!
Surge the faucets,
Clamour the chairs.
Mouths are speaking:
With porridge crammed.
"For all the beauty"
Are giving out thanks.
If you could just know,
The close and the distant,
How much for my own
Head I have pity -
The steppe - the casemate -
And God in the horde!
Heaven - that's where -
Nobody talks!
Skirt-chaser is cattle -
Shopkeeper is grainy!
My God - he's the one
Who shall give unto me
- Not time, not at all!
For days are all numbered! -
But merely four walls -
Where to keep my silence.
January 26th,
1926
Paris
''In the dawn...''
In the dawn - the slowest blood,
In the dawn - the realest silence.
Spirit from the flesh and bone asks for a divorce,
Bird unto the cage of ribs a divorce provides.
Eye it seeth - invisiblemost wides,
Heart it seeth - invisiblemost ties...
Ear it drinketh - unheardmost vows.
Over a broken Igor, Div cries and cries...
- March 22nd, 1922
“My Shape Entire...”
My shape entire carried pain -
Alike a mountain in my skirt -
But all this pain across my body -
Ways to know my love.
Just like a field split up inside me
Split for a thunderstorm.
I'll recognize my love by distance -
So close to each and all.
And like a hole that gapes in me,
Down to the sappy base.
I'll recognize my love by veins
That run from feet to face.
It's moaning. With a mane-like draft
The Hun swirls all around my form.
The tearing of most faithful strings –
Is how my love I'll know.
The throated, yes, the throated rust
Of some loud gorge's living salt,
A running rift is how I plan to recognize my love,
But NO! –
I'll know it by the trilling
Across a body whole.
To Boris Pasternak
The di-stance: oh, the versts, the miles...
We were ar-ranged and s-eated,
So that we act much softer now,
Onto the earth's two corners.
The di-stance: oh, the versts, far ways...
We were unglued, unsoldered,
And crucified, two arms were parted,
But didn't know that it's a mold
Of inspirations with the tendons...
They didn't feud us, but diffused us,
Flaked us down...
A wall and a moat, unlayered.
Resettled us, like eagles –
Conspirators: the versts, far roads...
Did not unsettle us – but scattered.
Across the slums of earthly widths
The placed us all, like orphans.
How many Marches have now passed?!
They broke us - like a deck of cards!
“A tousled star...”
A tousled star,
Hurried into nowhere,
From the strangest nothing.
A lone wanderer amidst other sheep,
Out to those flocks golden-fleeced.
Like jealousy, onto us rushing -
The hairy star of the ancients!
- 1921