Bride of Ice Read online

  have stared into the sun without blinking.

  Can my young gaze be too heavy for you?

  No one has ever stared more

  tenderly or more fixedly after you…

  I kiss you – across hundreds of

  separating years.

  1916

  You throw back your head

  You throw back your head, because

  you are proud. And a braggart.

  This February has

  brought me a gay companion!

  Clattering with gold pieces, and

  slowly puffing out smoke, we

  walk like solemn foreigners

  throughout my native city.

  And whose attentive hands have

  touched your eyelashes, beautiful boy, and

  when or how many times your

  lips have been kissed

  I do not ask. That dream my thirsty

  spirit has conquered. Now

  I can honour in you the

  divine boy, ten years old!

  Let us wait by the river that

  rinses the coloured beads of street-lights:

  I shall take you as far as the square

  that has witnessed adolescent Tsars.

  Whistle out your boyish

  pain, your heart squeezed in your hand.

  My indifferent and crazy creature –

  now set free – goodbye!

  1916

  Where does this tenderness come from?

  Where does this tenderness come from?

  These are not the – first curls I

  have stroked slowly – and lips I

  have known are – darker than yours

  as stars rise often and go out again

  (where does this tenderness come from?)

  so many eyes have risen and died out

  in front of these eyes of mine,

  and yet no such song have

  I heard in the darkness of night before,

  (where does this tenderness come from?):

  here, on the ribs of the singer.

  Where does this tenderness come from?

  And what shall I do with it, young

  sly singer, just passing by?

  Your lashes are – longer than anyone’s.

  1916

  Bent with worry

  Bent with worry, God

  paused, to smile.

  And look, there were many

  holy angels with bodies of

  the radiance he had

  given them,

  some with enormous wings and

  others without any,

  which is why I weep

  so much

  because even more than God

  himself I love his fair angels.

  1916

  Today or tomorrow the snow will melt

  Today or tomorrow the snow will melt.

  You lie alone beneath an enormous fur.

  Shall I pity you? Your lips

  have gone dry for ever.

  Your drinking is difficult, your step heavy.

  Every passer-by hurries away from you.

  Was it with fingers like yours that Rogozhin

  clutched the kitchen knife?

  And the eyes, the eyes in your face!

  Two circles of charcoal, year-old circles!

  Surely when you were still young your girl

  lured you into a joyless house.

  Far away – in the night – over asphalt – a cane.

  Doors – swing open into – night – under beating wind.

  Come in! Appear! Undesired guest! Into

  my chamber which is – most bright!

  1916

  VERSES ABOUT MOSCOW

  1

  There are clouds – about us

  and domes – about us:

  over the whole of Moscow

  so many hands are needed!

  I lift you up like a

  sapling, my best burden: for

  to me you are weightless.

  In this city of wonder

  this peaceful city

  I shall be joyful, even

  when I am dead. You

  shall reign, or grieve

  or perhaps receive my crown:

  for you are my first born!

  When you fast – in Lent

  do not blacken your brows

  and honour the churches – these

  forty times forty – go

  about on foot – stride youthfully

  over the whole seven of

  these untrammelled hills.

  Your turn will come.

  You will give Moscow

  with tender bitterness

  to your daughter also.

  As for me – unbroken sleep

  and the sound of bells

  in the surly dawn of

  the Vagankovo cemetery.

  2

  Strange and beautiful brother – take this

  city no hands built – out of my hands!

  Church by church – all the forty times forty, and

  the small pigeons also that rise over them.

  Take the Spassky gate, with its flowers, where

  the orthodox remove their caps, and

  the chapel of stars, that refuge from evil,

  where the floor is – polished by kisses.

  Take from me the incomparable circle

  of five cathedrals, ancient, holy friend!

  I shall lead you as a guest from another

  country to the Chapel of the Inadvertent Joy

  where pure gold domes will begin to shine

  for you, and sleepless bells will start thundering.

  There the Mother of God will drop her

  cloak upon you from the crimson clouds

  and you will rise up filled with wonderful powers.

  Then, you will not repent that you have loved me!

  5

  Over the city that great Peter rejected

  rolls out the thunder of the bells.

  A thundering surf has overturned upon

  this woman you have now rejected.

  I offer homage to Peter and you also,

  yet above you both the bells remain

  and while they thunder from that blueness, the

  primacy of Moscow cannot be questioned

  for all the forty times forty churches

  laugh above the arrogance of Tsars.

  7

  There are seven hills – like seven bells

  seven bells, seven bell-towers. Every

  one of the forty times forty churches, and the

  seven hills of bells have been numbered.

  On a day of bells I was born, it was

  the golden day of John the Divine.

  The house was gingerbread surrounded by

  wattle-fence, and small churches with gold heads.

  And I loved it, I loved the first ringing,

  the nuns flowing towards Mass, and

  the wailing in the stone, the heat of sleeping –

  the sense of a soothsayer in the neighbouring house.

  Come with me, people of Moscow, all of you,

  imbecile, thieving, flagellant mob!

  And priest: stop my mouth up firmly

  with Moscow – which is a land of bells!

  8

  Moscow, what a vast

  hostelry is your house!

  Everyone in Russia is – homeless,

  we shall all make our way towards you.

  With shameful brands on our backs and

  knives – stuck in the tops of our boots,

  for you call us in to you

  however far away we are,

  because for the brand of the criminal

  and for every known sickness

  we have our healer here,

  the Child Panteleimon.

  Behind a small door where

  people pour in their crowds

  lies the Iversky heart –

  red-gold and ra
diant

  and a Hallelujah floods

  over the burnished fields.

  Moscow soil, I bend to

  kiss your breast.

  1916

  from INSOMNIA

  2

  As I love to

  kiss hands, and

  to name everything, I

  love to open

  doors!

  Wide – into the night!

  Pressing my head

  as I listen to some

  heavy step grow softer

  or the wind shaking

  the sleepy and sleepless

  woods.

  Ah, night

  small rivers of water rise

  and bend towards – sleep.

  (I am nearly sleeping.)

  Somewhere in the night a

  human being is drowning.

  3

  In my enormous city it is – night,

  as from my sleeping house I go – out,

  and people think perhaps I’m a daughter or wife

  but in my mind is one thought only: night.

  The July wind now sweeps a way for – me.

  From somewhere, some window, music though – faint.

  The wind can blow until the dawn – today,

  in through the fine walls of the breast rib-cage.

  Black poplars, windows, filled with – light.

  Music from high buildings, in my hand a flower.

  Look at my steps – following – nobody.

  Look at my shadow, nothing’s here of me.

  The lights – are like threads of golden beads

  in my mouth is the taste of the night – leaf.

  Liberate me from the bonds of – day,

  my friends, understand: I’m nothing but your dream.

  5

  Now as a guest from heaven, I

  visit your country:

  I have seen the vigil of the forests

  and sleep in the fields.

  Somewhere in the night horseshoes

  have torn up the grass, and

  there are cows breathing heavily in

  a sleepy cowshed.

  Now let me tell you sadly and

  with tenderness of the

  goose-watchman awake, and

  the sleeping geese,

  of hands immersed in dog’s wool,

  grey hair – a grey dog –

  and how towards six

  the dawn is beginning.

  6

  Tonight – I am alone in the night,

  a homeless and sleepless nun!

  Tonight I hold all the keys to this

  the only capital city

  and lack of sleep guides me on my path.

  You are so lovely, my dusky Kremlin!

  Tonight I put my lips to the breast

  of the whole round and warring earth.

  Now I feel hair – like fur – standing on end:

  the stifling wind blows straight into my soul.

  Tonight I feel compassion for everyone,

  those who are pitied, along with those who are kissed.

  7

  In the pine-tree, tenderly tenderly,

  finely finely: something hissed.

  It is a child with black

  eyes that I see in my sleep.

  From the fair pine-trees hot

  resin drips, and in this

  splendid night there are

  saw-teeth going over my heart.

  8

  Black as – the centre of an eye, the centre, a blackness

  that sucks at light. I love your vigilance

  Night, first mother of songs, give me the voice to sing of you

  in those fingers lies the bridle of the four winds.

  Crying out, offering words of homage to you, I am

  only a shell where the ocean is still sounding.

  But I have looked too long into human eyes.

  Reduce me now to ashes – Night, like a black sun.

  9

  Who sleeps at night? No one is sleeping.

  In the cradle a child is screaming.

  An old man sits over his death, and anyone

  young enough talks to his love, breathes

  into her lips, looks into her eyes.

  Once asleep – who knows if we’ll wake again?

  We have time, we have time, we have time to sleep!

  From house to house the sharp-eyed

  watchman goes with his pink lantern

  and over the pillow scatters the rattle

  of his loud clapper, rumbling.

  Don’t sleep! Be firm! Listen, the alternative

  is – everlasting sleep. Your – everlasting house!

  10

  Here’s another window

  with more sleepless people!

  Perhaps – drinking wine or

  perhaps only sitting,

  or maybe two lovers are

  unable to part hands.

  Every house has

  a window like this.

  A window at night: cries

  of meeting or leaving.

  Perhaps – there are many lights,

  perhaps – only three candles.

  But there is no peace in

  my mind anywhere, for

  in my house also, these

  things are beginning:

  Pray for the wakeful house,

  friend, and the lit window.

  1916

  POEMS FOR AKHMATOVA

  1

  Muse of lament, you are the most beautiful of

  all muses, a crazy emanation of white night:

  and you have sent a black snow storm over all Russia.

  We are pierced with the arrows of your cries

  so that we shy like horses at the muffled

  many times uttered pledge – Ah! – Anna

  Akhmatova – the name is a vast sigh

  and it falls into depths without name

  and we wear crowns only through stamping

  the same earth as you, with the same sky over us.

  Whoever shares the pain of your deathly power will

  lie down immortal – upon his death bed.

  In my melodious town the domes are burning

  and the blind wanderer praises our shining Lord.

  I give you my town of many bells,

  Akhmatova, and with the gift: my heart.

  2

  I stand head in my hands thinking how

  unimportant are the traps we set for one another.

  I hold my head in my hands as I sing

  in this late hour, in the late dawn.

  Ah how violent is this wave which has

  lifted me up on to its crest: I sing

  of one that is unique among us

  as the moon is alone in the sky,

  that has flown into my heart like a raven,

  has speared into the clouds

  hook-nosed, with deathly anger: even

  your favour is dangerous,

  for you have spread out your night

  over the pure gold of my Kremlin itself

  and have tightened my throat with the pleasure

  of singing as if with a strap.

  Yes, I am happy, the dawn never

  burnt with more purity, I am

  happy to give everything to you

  and to go away like a beggar,

  for I was the first to give you –

  whose voice deep darkness! has

  constricted the movement of my breathing –

  the name of the Tsarskoselsky Muse.

  3

  I am a convict. You won’t fall behind.

  You are my guard. Our fate is therefore one.

  And in that emptiness that we both share

  the same command to ride away is given.

  And now my demeanour is calm.

  And now my eyes are without guile.

  Won’t you set me free, my guard, and

  let me walk now, towards that pine-tree?


  4

  You block out everything, even the sun

  at its highest, hold all the stars in your hand!

  If only through – some wide open door, I

  could blow like the wind to where you are,

  and starting to stammer, suddenly blushing,

  could lower my eyes before you

  and fall quiet, in tears, as

  a child sobs to receive forgiveness.

  1916

  POEMS FOR BLOK

  1

  Your name is a – bird in my hand

  a piece of – ice on the tongue

  one single movement of the lips.

  Your name is: five signs,

  a ball caught in flight, a

  silver bell in the mouth

  a stone, cast in a quiet pool

  makes the splash of your name, and

  the sound is in the clatter of

  night hooves, loud as a thunderclap

  or it speaks straight into my forehead,

  shrill as the click of a cocked gun.