By Alexander Blok
To The Muse
In your choruses, sacred, doth ring
Fatal tidings of somebody's death.
Rings a curse of the sanctified writs,
And perversion of joy takes its wings.
They hold such an alluring force,
That I'm ready to speak past my oaths .
It's as if you've corrupted the angels,
Seduced them with glamours of yours.
And when you start laughing at fealty,
Above you there burns at a flash
The circle that I once have noticed,
So dim: made of lilac and slates.
My stranger, are you good or evil?
How wisely they speak of your form:
To others: a muse and a wonder...
To me you are torture and storm.
And I do not know why at sunrise,
At hour when no strength remained,
I lived and not died, but when seeing your face,
For your consolations I asked?
I once wished for us to be enemies
So why did you give me the gift:
A glade filled with flowers, a castle with stars, -
Your beauty's whole curse you gave up?
More cunning than nights in the northlands
And stronger than fine vins d'ay,
More quick than a gipsy's romancing
Your fearful caresses became...
Though there was a last fatal comfort
In trampling my long-cherished shrines,
And also a heart's wild delighting -
And passion, so acrid, like fire!
- 29 December, 1912
Echo
Out to the green glade, while calling out, hearing,
I walk over rustled leaves.
The cold crescent stands, unscorched for the moment.
Green sickle amidst the blues.
Oh, swirling leaves!
Oh, gold of autumn!
I call out - to hear
Thrice resounding responses
I call out to hear
A loud ringing at distance,
Thus answers the nymph,
And thus Echo responds,
As if to the fields of the golden-skinned twilight,
Chased by a child-god
And brimming with laughter...
There, caught by the deity, Echo collapses,
Such passionate swirling,
Such passionate falling,
Her laughter resounds
In prolonged repetition
Under pure heavens,
The innocent heavens...
Of passion and death,
Both Of Death and desire -
The wedding-day branches:
Fall's decors and bangles...
Out there - within the azure reaches - my voice doth prophecy
Return,
Foresees the tumbling of a whole wide world
Unto my form!
And yet, once having flashed upon the wing
Of fly-by night,
The slipped off nymph is laughing
With the evening's languid flute.
By the Sea
A twilight's half-circle stands over the waves,
The sun will soon vanish away.
- Do you see, papa… but look over there,
What a boat towards us sails!
- Oh, my young daughter, we would better keep
This ancient sea far from sight...
Look: how it brings here, right over its waves,
Towards our brightness - the night.
- No, papa, look there - if only just once,
What motley banners it flies!
It’s bringing brightness to the lighthouse.
Hear the sublime song it cries!
- Daughter, this song belongs to a siren.
Wary now, let us go home...
Oh, do you see how the fog's crawling in:
How blue this dark ship has become...
But the daughter now weeps in powerful bursts,
Ocean depths beckon her in,
She wants to let go of the shore and swim out ,
To turn real some old innermost dream.
- July, 1905
“Darling girl, why do you spellcast...”
Darling girl, why do you spellcast
With your shoulder and black pupil?
At this rate I too would falter
And I’ve nothing to do with this.
I know how many you would capture
Inside your games, so full of danger,
Then turn a mother, smart and tender,
Out of a woman forged of passions.
But, having known such fateful changes, –
How many losses, many pleasures!
You’ll be reborn from foam of crimson
Just as we know you in the present.
- December, 1915
We're Forgotten, Alone on this Earth
We're forgotten, alone on this earth.
So let's sit awhile, softly, in warmth.
In this corner, so roomy and warm,
Let us stare at October-time murk.
Just like then through the window flash flames,
My dear friend, you and I are old greys.
All that was, both the storms and the pains,
Are behind us. Why stare you ahead?
As if out to decipher you look,
To read out from the newest of news.
Like for some raging angel you wait?
All has past. And now nothing returns.
Just the walls, and the books, and the days.
Oh, my friend, how familiar are they!
I don't pace, and for nothing I wait,
I'm not saddened by anything past.
It just happens that you again thread
Onto thin strings the brightest of glass.
Like back then, you remember so clear...
Oh, how epic were those passing years!
But when you had more of thy youth,
And shinier silk-threads you took...
And would wander thy hand quicker yet,
So pick out, even now, a bright thread,
So that silk through your needle you pass,
Even darkness with glimmers would dress.
The Queen
In all the moonlit lands one’s never seen
Shoulders which are more snow-white,
Heard such tender voice of many strings,
Speech which flutters, laughing bright.
All the singers pen their midnight verses
Just for her, for her alone,
While the jealous ladies whisper, whisper
Right beside her speechless doors.
A dark knight, who’s left his visor lowered,
Rushes into battle with a thirst;
Just as she, a snow-white hand a’waving,
Sends him to a certain death.
Yet, when she’s alone, from her cold tower
She would stare upon the lakes, the plains;
She would stare upon the fields, the forests,
From a window high above the lands.
And a tear doth gleam within her gaze so tender,
While in distances that stretch beyond,
Ramble thunderclouds and dawns do redden,
And flies off somewhere a flock of storks.
And beside all of this – her spirit’s master,
Yes, that wanderer, who evermore
Stays forgetful of these distant pathways,
And will never come back home to his abode.
- 28th November , 1908 to 16th of May, 1914
I See a Glimmer Long-Forgotten
I see a glimmer long-forgotten
And I discern for just a flash,
Through violins - a stranger singing,
That voice in low notes from the breast,
With which responded an old girlfriend,
To my first love's appealing words,
And to this day this voice I'm knowing
When wading through such raging storms,
And when the past, without a marking,
Has gone, and only passions strange
Remind me, with their sudden timing,
Remind me - of that happiness.
- December 12th, 1913
The Once-Hidden Symbols Start Burning
The once-hidden symbols start burning
On a dull, on most wakeless of walls,
Now, with red and gold poppies among them,
In my dreams they would loom by my form.
In the caves of the night I am hiding,
Not recalling the wonders severe.
In the dawntime the bluest chimeras
Into bright heaven's mirrors would peer
I am fleeing into long-gone moments,
I am shutting my eyes, I'm afraid,
Here's a book growing cold - on its pages
Is a young woman's golden-most braid.
Now, above me the skydome has lowered,
A black dream's heaving hard in my breast,
For my ending foretold is so close now,
And the war, and the flames - all ahead.
- October 1902
The Double
One day, through October-time mists
I wandered, recalling a song.
(O, flash of unbribable kisses!
Caresses of women unbought!)
And now - through unbreachable mists
The song, long-forgotten, appears.
Of youth I have now begun dreaming,
And you, as if living, and you...
And in this bright dream disappearing
Away from the wind, rain, and murk...
(That's how of fresh youth we startdreaming.
But you, won't you come back, will you?)
I see now - through fog-shrouded nighttime,
While swaging, comes closer to me
A rapidly aging, though young, guy
(How strange, could this be but a dream?)
He walks out of fog-shrouded nighttime
And stands right beside where I be.
He whispers: "I'm tired of my swayings,
Where breathe I with deep-frozen mists,
In other men's mirrors reflected,
Where other men's women I kiss..."
And a strange premonition I'm getting...
I'll see him again, it foresees...
He suddenly smiles - fast and brashly -
And then, once again, I'm alone...
I've seen him somewhere in the past,
Familiar his mournful form...
And could it then be that it's me that I've met,
Inside of a mirror's smooth chrome?
- October 1909