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A Motif from Brodsky
It was a pure light blue winter's night.
The city's streets lay outside the horizon of human vision.
Everything was lulled beneath a fresh layer of fluff,
shaggy sculptures of stones piled up on the shore
of the abyss by time, forests and roads slumbered,
the moon already deep in sleep in its silvery trailing gown.
The birds fell silent in the fields, the drowsy pictures
fluttered out of the memory summoning up ghosts.
Footprints hurled into the wet snow froze,
fog swirled behind the iced trees.
There was no one, only the falling snow's murmurs,
wind at the foot of an immobile mountain, silent.
Was it hoping for silence?
Human exhalation implausibly attempted to warm the air,
angels played on their trumpets poking through perforations
in the clouds, their tears sparkling like real stars
listing each and every earthbound name.
Everything was becoming dead, dozy and dreamy.
Words disappeared somewhere, wooden houses stood abandoned,
dawn, stiff with frost, did not appear on the scene.
Valleys solidified, as did light on the slopes,
and mountain waterfalls like the crystals of polar ice fields.
The sun had fallen asleep, as had the days
of an Indian summer, the planets, the cosmos,
as had souls throughout the universe. Somewhere at the back of thought's
deep space - Snow is falling, time changes guard.
Sleep then, world, fast in the winter's white arms.
Earth's heart beats on gently.
December 1988
A House of Red Brick
In this house there were holy things: a photograph spliced
by a black mourning ribbon, a candle melted in a candelabra
after a farewell soiree, a telephone hung up on the wall
midway through some word. Nothing else, perhaps only
loneliness,
whose refuge is damnation.
Wherever we go, it will chaperone us while
pointing the way out of captivity: the same abyss
for everyone. A house as mortal as we are. Wild animals
who devoid of anger throw themselves onto their prey.
* * *
Close my eyes, still my voice
and unbind my hands so I may reach out for heaven
only then will I find a way through the boundlessness
that separates us.
I feel the sun sinking, its glow sets
behind the moorlands. What shall become of me?
I shall attain the unknown night and in the homeland of the darkness
I will not discern the road to you.
Close my eyes, still my voice.
If you do not I shall collapse exhausted
by the far flight towards heaven, and then never,
even at your calling will we meet
in this universe that so isolates people from the Gods.
Watery World
The ocean has thrown these smooth bones onto the shore
and like splinters off a tree they take root in the sticky beach.
Pebbles carried off by a wave emit the sound of
castanets. The wind rests in the cloud formations
and shells sparkle beneath the green waters.
There at the bottom clouds emerge from the caves.
- Has someone lit a torch?
Over the top of the coral reefs fish swim
whose universe is the starting point of silence.
1987
Oh, My Love. . .
for M.
When the boisterous wind pulls itself to life
seek refuge beyond the eternal mountain for on Earth
which is round and in fact has but few paths
there is no one to protect you: oh, my love
whatever you are in that heavenly attire
whether dawn sunrise sunset rain that
taps at the closed winter lake Run away
to where roads have no beginning nor end
for in this place the gloom will inexplicably sweep away:
hearing sight stranded fish the smile on a human face
a stream of blood on a cracked palm an incandescent
stone which provides warmth and security Everything
* * *
To wake up before the sunrise,
to see the sky's ceiling propped up by a meadow,
a sleepy evening, rocked by a cloud.
To touch, while light still dozes inside the earth
a Tatra mountainscape painted with time's gloss.
To pray for everything, to forget anxieties,
poems, that comfortable armchair in the city,
to make out the stars at night above human habitation,
to hold your face in my hands at the hour
of rest. Oh, if only I could get used to silence!
To hear beech trees wilt and their leaves rust
when scattered over the world's floor.
Blood flows more silently.
The landscape yellows. And rain closes the eyelids.
What Version of Truth Will Survive?
In which days or nights
will we come to face the dead
and always that self-same trace of uncertainty
Will it be necessary to cross hurriedly over
to the other side without taking a breath through sleep
Will swarms of birds fly over us
lazily waking the air with their wings
Will we reach the receding landscape
thus overtaking the future
What truth will survive on the Plains of Eden
Will time exist without us
In what dimension will we leave proof of our existence
to ourselves to the Earth to the stooping tree of love
Will anyone now be able to promise
a similar place in the Unknown
Will the seasons that pass over the steely
green color of lakes and forests flow after us
Where do all thoughts really lead
the movement of a hand that falls onto a face in anger or sorrow
the sounds and silence Light of first dusk
The planet that embraces Giving shelter
Hymn
You who made the myth of the eternal paradise,
before the sun penetrated through to the depths of infinity,
take a look past your daily
grind
into the cloudy distance of time
and light.
On the rim of the gloom your paradisiacal servants lost, in the silence,
their feathers and crashed down into the sea.
The earth opened its dry
mouth,
as the moon rose the ruler of the
night.
Now he is their lord, chooses dreams,
and acts as silent guide around the ashes of paradise.
You cannot do much now. Within
your cold
steely heaven, which has no end,
forests, archipelagoes, ravines full of people and torchlight,
music and the seasons have sunk.
Take pleasure in that truth.
While we
are carried by the white ground
down to the bottom of hell.
There at the bottom is our place, our time
and world, which thanks to your power lies in evil.
Life flows in it like a river of
darkness,
without regret, suffering or fear
then it suddenly cascades into the abyss of space
and thus it is that if only by brushing against the future with
a single word
we are forever fading, never prepared for your way.
Translated by Donald Pirie
In A Provincial Cinema
to I. M.
Forest trees extras rapidly flash outside the car window
like images on photosensitive film projected from memory by the eye
in a provincial cinema of shut eyelids on screen
mute lips kiss the wind breathes with mute air
and a fire is burning - the next frame - but without crackling sparks
smoke roams the grey sky and it alone needs no sound
to express its contents on the lake dusk undulates the lens
can do nothing to divert one's gaze as the bulrushes so perfectly
imitate the rhythm of fingers that I'm unable to forget and still
the reel keeps spinning a closeup on your body is unrepeatable
everything tangles it makes no sense so that falling gradually asleep
I can see the entire film once more but this time in slow motion
(14 March 1993)
Translated by Ela Kotkowska Atkinson
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