Стихи и эссе

The friends who met here and embraced are gone,
Each to his own mistake; one flashes on
To fame and ruin in a rowdy lie,
A village torpor holds the other one,
Some local wrong where it takes time to die:
The empty junction glitters in the sun.

So at all quays and crossroads: who can tell,

O places of decision and farewell,
To what dishonor all adventure leads,
What parting gift could give that friend protection,
So orientated, his salvation needs
The Bad Lands and the sinister direction?

All landscapes and all weathers freeze with fear,

But none have ever thought, the legends say,
The time allowed made it impossible;
For even the most pessimistic set
The limit of their errors at a year.
What friends could there be left then to betray,

What joy take longer to atone for. Yet

Who would complete without extra day
The journey that should take no time at all?

4. The Pilgrim

No windows in his suburb lights that bedroom where
A little fever heard large afternoons at play:
His meadows multiply; that mill, though, is not there
Which went on grinding at the back of love all day.

Nor all his weeping ways through weary wastes have found

The castle where his Greater Hallows are interned;
For broken bridges halt him, and dark thickets round
Some ruin where an evil heritage was burned.

Could he forget a child's ambition to be old

All institutions where it learned to wash and lie,
He'd tell the truth, for which he thinks himself too young,

That everywhere on the horizon of his sigh

Is now, as always, only waiting to be told
To be his father's house and speak his mother tongue.

5. The City

In villages from which their childhood's came
Seeking Necessity, they had been taught
Necessity by nature is the same,
No matter how or by whom it be sought.

The city, though, assumed no such belief,

But welcomed each as if he came alone,
The nature of Necessity like grief
Exactly corresponding to his own.

And offered them so many, every one

Found some temptation fit to govern him;
And settled down to master the whole craft

Of being nobody; sat in the sun

During the lunch-hour round the fountain rim;
And watched the country kids arrive, and laughed.

6. The First Temptation