Читать «A moongate in my wall: собрание стихотворений» онлайн - страница 163

[1960s]

648. Василий Сумбатов(1893–1977). Гиперборей

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!

1 Nov. 1966

649. Василий Сумбатов(1893–1977). Видение

To Mary Vezey

The street lamps shed their meager light, mist wove its wisps about the town, a chilly twilight shuttered tight all windows, drawing curtains down. Then, growing white, not vapor-soft but heavy, like a lowered load, dusk let a fragile hoarfrost waft onto the sidewalks and the road. November midnight: winter's eve, a helpless longing, taut distress of autumn strings in mute reprieve, leave-taking, but without redress… A sketch from nature? — No: the time was filled with flowers, springlike-bright, when suddenly the poet's mind envisioned this November night. About him warm th and sunlight shone, young foliage gleamed, birds flitted, gay, everything bloomed, — his soul alone had left this blossoming of May. He roamed along deserted roads, where street lamps shed their meager light, where mist in pungent smoke-rings rose, where hoarfrost tinged sidewalks white.

5 Dec. 1967

650. Василий Сумбатов (1893–1977). Памяти юности

We parted at an early date, — youth, — in the blackest year of war, though we had been fast friends before, still, friendship cannot conquer fate. Our parting came at night, when skies were dark above the steppe. Your way was down the trail to yesterday, and never once you raised your eyes. Night quenched the heat, and scattered far the glare of sunset; and the grass, its strings by twilight winds harassed, moaned in the steppe like a guitar. And from afar I could discern a voice that sang for me alone that all my happy days were gone, that you were never to return.