A moon gate in my wall: собрание стихотворений

Guided by some lightly winging spirit
far beyond the sea the birds have flown.
On this dark and bleak November morning,
why do you and I stay home alone?

Maybe we should follow — take a knapsack,

staff and flask, some good and trusted books,
and pursue the swiftly flying swallows
over woods and meadowlands and brooks?

Only those who linger are un able

to partake of joys on Earth arrayed.
Every turnpike, boundary and barrier
we would pass, unseen and unafraid.

Surely then, at break of day tomorrow

you and I would reach the rosy haze
over gleaming rocks and crested breakers,
slender palms, and golden blessed days!

And as surely, to the fullest measure,

we who dared would be repaid indeed
for the grain of utter faith within us,
for that single mustard seed!

[1960s]

618. Дмитрий Кленовский (1893–1976). Царскосельские стихи [279]

When I was a boy I used to be your friend,
beautiful town of parks and lonely statues,
dense lilac groves and empty palaces, —
you hadn't yet been visited by grief.
Your Gumileff was still a carefree youth,
Akhmatova — a schoolgirl and in love,
and Innokenti Annensky had not
died suffocating at your railroad station;
even your Pushkin used to seem to me
not dead, but living, not yet grown up,
but just another of my noisy classmates.

Decades have passed. Impossible to count

your losses. All your palaces now lie
decaying. All your poets have been killed
by silence, bullet, or complete contempt.
Alone the name of Pushkin, as of old,
still shines above you like a glorious promise
— a token of the coming future truth.

[1960s]

619. Дмитрий Кленовский (1893–1976). «Как много есть прекрасного на свете…» [280]

There s such a wealth of beauty in the world:
a maiden’s breast, a flying eagle's wing,
loaf of a maple, sunrise in Rialto,
a lily-of-the-valley in the spring;

a leaping doe; the Milky Way, a sail,

the Volga's great expanse, a child's eyes…
You see yourself: too many things to mention
for you and me to count or to surmise.

And yet is life not easier for knowing

that everywhere around you children roam,
and maples grow, and there are waves, and maidens,
or simply someone's garden and a home?

You say to me: All that is transient, passing!

But you are wrong! Next spring, in that green bower,
another doe will leap again, as lightly,
and underfoot will bloom another flower!

Our world is ill. It whispers invocations

and tries to smother what in life is true.
But nowhere in it stands a ruined building
where grass will not come up anew.

[1960s]