To Blok
1.
Alone, alone amidst the mountains. Seeking You.
I’m wading aimlessly through ice-cold clouds.
My soul
In deathly mourning.
Now having thrust the rod a’ground, I stand upon a crest.
And though I may be laughing, my soul is brimmed with pain.
Unwillingly, I’m laughing
At this dream of mine.
But oh, how truly heavy sits my diadem of gold!
How tired I feel!.. But still, the distance burns and burns.
Within the nightly distance
My foxhorn calls and calls.
I was among you once. As sunrays filled with gold
The outlandish thunderclouds inside the bright beyonds.
I tried to wake you up then,
But you slept on and on.
I was among you; I was sad, unearthly.
My words resounded everyplace.
While all of you just mocked me,
Laughing to my face.
And so I left. And now…
I am amidst the peaks,
Alone, alone. Awaiting unheralded signs.
Alone, alone remaining
Amidst the misty storms.
All’s as if in flames here.
And it’s only You that I’m awaiting.
Again, I aimlessly outstretch my hand.
My soul, my soul’s
In deathly mourning.
- September 1901, Moscow
2.
From behind the distant peaks
An enlightened groom appears.
He was standing quite alone,
Ascended far above the earth.
Came the news, more than once,
Of a terrestrial ruler’s arrival.
And in a pre-morning hour,
Again prophecies burst into flames.
Just a lone stream of light
Through the thunderclouds rose, over mountains…
Like a prophet, it stood right there,
So mighty and free, dressed in scarlet...
Here it comes. And this very crown
Reflects the dawn's crimson radiance.
This – crowned Taurus, he is
God and founder of some new existence.
- May 1901, Moscow
3.
I am fated for silence.
And why must I talk?
Won’t forget how to suffer.
Won’t get tired of love.
We’re evoked
Without finish…
It is time we depart…
They’re carrying scarlet
Beside four thorny crowns.
Filled with flames
And with love
Is my dying, my wandering stare…
O, come close to my side –
All sprawled out, and in blood,
I lay still at the foot of the mountains.
How I burst into trembling right above the abyss,
And then dropped to the valley, where a little stream sings.
When a hefty stone, with a whistle
Suddenly knocked me aground –
And this hefty stone, with a whistle,
Battered my temple right down.
Now at rest in the fields of May-lilies –
I’m a flower agape, filled with blood –
And no longer heaving in torture,
My chest that’s at last grown cold.
Don’t leave me, my friend
Don’t forget me!..
- 1903, Moscow
The Magus
I, in the whistling streams of time,
That tear so wildly at my charcoal cape,
Am calling out to people, seeking prophets,
Who boldly sing about the secrets of the sky.
I walk ahead with rapid steps.
At last: a cliff, and there you stand!
You wear a diadem of stars like some relentless magus –
And stare at me with a prophetic smile.
Beside the feet of ages, a discordant racket
Riots in eternal sleep and rolls around.
This voice of yours - the screeching of an eagle –
Keeps rising through the ice cold heights.
He wears a crown of flames above the realm of boredom,
Ascended over passing years –
The magus has grown still, his arms are folded.
He is a prophet of a timeless Spring.
- 1903
The Sun
A heart's ignited by the sun.
The sun so quickly to eternity is driving.
The sun is an eternal window
To the golden blinding.
A rose sits in the gold of curls.
This rose: how tenderly it sways!
Inside all roses, sunrays' liquid gold
Flows outwards with crimson heat.
A pauper heart is filled with evil,
Burnt and ground up.
But our souls are mirrors:
All reflecting gold!
- 1903
In the Wild Open Spaces
Greetings, -
Oh, desired
Wildness,
Liberated
Will.
Oh, victorious
Distance, glorious –
And so cold,
So pale...
Now the wind is rushing by, rustling yellow grass,
Also flowers: tiny, white - ones that bloom so late.
Now the wind is reaching down to the ice-cold ground.
And, all-the-while, I'm taking in the rustling.
How strange the motions of the nimble grass rods:
The willful and the brave masses.
Quieter…
Enough:
Tiny flowers, pale and white,
Tiny flowers:
Quieter!
I'm all tears: it hurts.
- August 1904. The Town of Silver Wells
Desperation
The jolly ice is tossing sparks,
While the heart’s – an icy slab;
And let the blizzard throw around
The whiteout, -
Oh, let it roar; And open up its scroll.
All’s breaking off: the snowbank
Boils, it bubbles with its squally lace.
The blizzard smokes into one’s forehead
With a snowstorm,
But soon enough it’d cackle out
And weave away into the night,
My double chases after me;
He’ll flash a moment on the fence,
He’ll slide along the frozen
Bank of a canal
And, having elongated, melt at once.
My soul, please stop – my soul, turn still!
Please blind me, snowflakes!
And please pierce the sky,
Oh, lamps along the streets,
Oh, sharpened spears of sunrays!
A mere unfinished song remains,
Of days that, after losing their color, burned away.
Please dance atop the slipp’ry plates,
Of flaming streetlamps,
Needles of the light!
- 1904
The Creator
Sad your gaze... Your frock unbuttoned...
Dry and somber, straight and thin;
Bent over a mound of books...
Working for a future's dream.
Now you run: how light your footsteps;
Twirl your cane - so quick to fight!
As your little black beard dances,
In your sharp stares: passion, might.
Flaming 'stache of scarlet poppies –
Contrasts with the pallid cheeks.
You are uniform, unchanging,
Slashing time-flow piece to piece.
Then you'll drop your gaze and arms…
Lightning schisms inside your thoughts.
You'll turn silent, grow enfeebled
Facing boors, before buffoons.
No, not thoughts but lightning needles
Burning into brains of foes,
With tight rhymes you'll be unleashing
Drunken horns of maelstroms.
Rattling with your stringent timbre
Aethers that give birth to stars…
Somewhere out: beyond horizons
There would flash a whole new world; -
There, above horizon's edges -
Sky, the sky of our souls:
Push it into Earth's deep bosom
With your long rhyme's flaming force.
Some new nebula uncharted
An astronomer would show us.
World in transience deceptive –
A mere thought about the past.
Rhymes are living in the stanzas, in the rhymes reside ideas,
And creating novel lights...
Right above your soul there hover
Dear poet, these new worlds!
All's mere symbols... But who are you? And where?
World... Then Russia... Petersburg –
Sun...And then... The distant planets…
Who are you? But, where, oh, demiurge?.
Bending all your life over a book,
Pale shape-shifter, ashen ghost!..
Mournful eyes... Your coat unbuttoned...
Dry and somber, proud and gaunt…
- March 1904, Moscow
Manifestation
The crowds of workers under golden waves of dusk.
Bright banners entwine, dance, and splash around.
Over the streetlights, above the metal fence,
From the roofs of houses –
Handkerchiefs are waved.
There –
Along the railings, pavements –
Running past the public gardens, -
Is the continual, quick,
Rattle
Of revolvers.
Fainter the funeral tune:
The bullets they both weep and shear!
And fresher thunderclouds of bloody banners
There - in what distances - they bear!
- 1906
Cesspool
Crimson Presnya long has tossed
All its bunts unto the wind…
So it ends: that ancient song –
Falling into wilder days...
Into flaming storm-clouds, into screams absconds
All the dust stirred-up by clouds…
While we see same spiky peaks,
And same piles of shaggy fur hats: on and on!
Slumber in the generational darkness,
Bending headwards into dirt!..
Twist your knees beneath the lashes, -
Children of the working folk!
And pointed right at our faces
Gunfire will certainly ring…
While that very same cesspool:
Sure puts out a rotten stink!
So that into a window grown sightless,
Into the maddening buzzing of flies,
And into the sun... slowly rising...
A big wooly spider would surely ignite.
- 1906 (1915)
In the Fields
I forgot. I ran off. I've been freed!
With pale showers the distances mist...
How the lonely, impoverished field
Like an orphan stretches so distant!
I don't fear neither anguish nor sadness:
When they savaged me - bloodied, I dropped.
So that stones - many-faceted, leaden -
Crumbled over the wall of my bones.
Now I rise through malicious dark weather
With my face that shines brightly as day.
Let the by-guttered ribs keep on drumming
On my black, on my feather-light shade.
Let the prickly, the pestilent rodules
Rip to shreds all the clothes on my bones;
While there sleeps on the pitiful tatters
Tender kiss of the chilliest dawn.
Over spaces I weave, without motion,
Out of hard thorny nettle a wreath.
While from distant and wilted-down shelties
Thin pale smoke would shoots forth constantly.
Oh my weeping wind, oh my dear brother!..
All's grown quiet here …
Dip me in dreams!
How the dry and delirious Greek girl
Tosses under me glistening flames.
- 1907, Paris
In Jail
So what if I was nailed again
To some moist chamber's corner?!.
Though I am crucified, I smile
With powers of a trembling day.
Now from my grave I'm stretching out
My gentle hands enclosed in sorrow;
So that my face with an exotic force
Would burn and burn inside the dawn!
As death is spreading out her arms
Upon the floor of my jailhouse, –
Within the years of torture ever-frenzied –
Within the waves of falling darkness.
- 1907
The City
As yellow stains showered down.
Something gasped, like in delirium:
And then indistinctly rattled,
“Suburb and city... Here I come!”
Summertime: Long sobs of petrol.
A trolley car somewhere clangs.
City squares, dusty lindens, -
And dusts of blazing plates...
Digging through: not men, but across beastlings;
Home looks like a stone-fashioned lump, -
Appears through a crack in the doorway
And a black hole window: a raging, growing gap!
- 1907
To Her
The grasses are all fashioned
With pearls.
While somewhere sound
Sad greetings...
And these hearted greetings
I too can hear.
Oh, Darling, where are you, -
Dear?..
The bright lights
Of evening: -
The evening lights
Are scarlet!...
With my hands both upraised: I await you here...
Oh, Darling, where are you, -
Dear?..
Hands upraised: And I await you
Within the streams of summer!
You: washed away
By the pale
Streams of this summer near...
Oh, Darling, where are you, -
Dear?..
- April 1908, Moscow
The Demon
Out of the melting snowy blizzards,
Amidst the gray stone-fashioned buildings,
Into the foggy dusk and candles'-glimmer:
My nameless brother and my genius
Has walked in dreams; walked wide-awake,
All shaken by the nightly murk;
He sadly overhung my chapter
With silence-streaming wings of his.
Having appeared above the rush of days,
He would awaken all the doubts eternal
With quick and shaky games of shades,
And with a smile uncertain.
Once was that he, entrapped by evil,
Would dance in bursts of unseen weeping...
Of untold suffering, as well,
Chased out to toss in darkest depths!
At times, when wand'ring half-asleep
Through city fog, between the buildings, -
I watched his arms, far outstretched,
Stretch ever towards me: with torments!
The dimming shadows of his lids,
The feeble bursts of soul,
The atlas scraps of clothing,
Their creases nightwards-blown…
With years, into the modern dusk stepped back
Both madness and strange inspiration.
Across now-hornless brows, through dusks,
Retreated somber contemplation.
- March 1908, Moscow
The Spider
No, I will live - and I will drink
The spring's sweet-smelling fragrance.
What matters if above my head, where shines the thread,
The poor mosquito rings away within the clutches of a spider.
So what, that during wartime
There's moaning, and then screams,
What matters if gunpowder smoke
Should eat through all it meets; When I am able to ignite the greening face,
Amidst the rays, which glisten
As they leave.
And let a tiny branch with dew drops shimmer;
While from beneath it, burning dumbly,
I’d let the dawn-light splatter me
With rosy ruby stains.
Alone. And leaning down upon a crutch.
A fiery burst of kisses would demand
My soul.
And then the wind
Some dust
Into the freezing space would toss, -
And carry it along the azure stretches.
And then I see:
You running midst the flowers
Under the ancient marble archway,
And you’re wearing purple silks
Under a flashy muslin hat.
You're here: though so shyly darling,
You lean into my ice and cold.
But not as a bride for me you blossomed:
Your groom more handsome, not as old.
My child, give me a smile, - O child!
Here on your hands – sweet-smelling lilies –
The bracelets pale - have grown gold-plated,
Under the shimmer of a hundred sunrays.
But dare to drop it, laughing through your pain,
To drop where pass the wandring-clouds, -
Do drop this yellow wallflower,
Into my trembling fingers!
You loudly cry, then whisper in my ear:
"There, where the arcs of branches cross together,
Come look at this araneum up in the heights
Who's hung himself upon a silvery circle."
You're laughing, running far away;
How you have smiled inside that liberated distance!
You're running - while I pity some odd thing.
You've gone away - while I'm in pain, and so much pain...
Just so, up into the turquoise enamel
Above an ancient gilded tower,
A tiny grampus would ascend -
And start to screech, and start to spin,
It won't remember all the storms of yesterday;
Behind it goes another - and behold:
Behind it, nearby and squealing time to time,
Within the violet rays of sunrise,
Above the gloss of a bell tower’s glass,
Flies its entire dark-winged kin.
It chews me up, this ennui of mine,
And voices yell to me from far away,
- From inside groves replete with dewy sedge –
They yell to me
That I look like a spider:
I listen in... There’s laughter in the distance,
The crackling of a little flame...
I'm watching closely...
As a river slumbers...
Inside the fogs - of banks where dawn the rays.
And pointing in that direction,
My hand creates a violent gesture...
My dry, dead hand...
A hand belonging to a spider...
I’m walking through a field behind a wattle,
Here rye is falling into bales like quails.
In front of an astonished pair of eyes,
Around me, weaves itself together,
The lattice of the day.
And it would flow out over fields –
The shadow multiplied at night –
Right there, with numberless unclasping hazes,
It'd turn the daytime into barren ash.
And over scraps of some escarpment
And right above the coastal scythe
A cigarette is puffing softly,
And there's a wheel that clangs and cries.
But, all-the-while, the greening millet
Has grown so worried with the stripe
Of questions that know no expression –
Pervading into all of life...
Could it, perchance, not be
World chaos
Which mumbles all-this-while the wheel?
- 1908
The Epitaph
Within the creeping cold of death
Has been instilled
My face.
Around me, in thick sadness wraps,
A morbid ring of shades.
So long ago, my younger soul
First found rest
In shadow's world.
Now weep then, O, you ripped-up strings,
The ripped strings of my soul!
- 1908, The Emerald Village
Not Afraid
As melancholy grows
And heart wounds scream with pain:
The fields are filled with fog
And the night soon came!
You will leave, and I
Will be alone again...
And the gray-haired giant would
Pass through forest peaks;
And the gray-haired giant would
Pass beside, with threats:
Start to shake the whole of woods
And the slope of skies itself,
Passing slowly in the night,
He would shade with trouble.
Frightful is the murk of night,
If there is no fire...
Sit beside me for a while,
Don’t leave me behind!..
Slumbers the unruly wind,
And the night-time flies at us...
Flashes through the mist...
A pair of crimson eyes –
Frightful is the murk of night,
If there is no fire...
Sit beside me for a while,
Don’t leave me behind!
I’m not scared; Not at all!..
You’re like a dream; a gleam...
Steady light sprays far and wide
From the distant thunder clouds....
Need to sleep...
The whole world sleeps...
And I’m in a dream...
...Yonder,
Stands the giant,
Nodding right to us!
- May 1909, Moscow