Armageddon
To L. C Bakst

“Three spirits, in the shape of frogs… will gather together the universe’s tsars for a final battle… at the place they call Armageddon…”
Revelation, XVI, 12–16
 
He placed his hands upon my shoulders,
(I don't know who he is,
But that the human heart collapses,
Pierced by fear)
Then walked me up a hill
And with his finger pointed all around it.
 
Never, not inside the deepest nightmares,
Have I known torments 
So thoroughly uncharted,
Or watched such desolation reign!
Before me, vast and dim,
Instilled in death’s delirium,
Was turning into stone
The swelling shape of an entire continent.
 
And no matter where I pointed my uneasy gaze –
There barren parches of savanna sprawled away 
With mouths of dried-up rivers and with flattened peaks;
Upon the edges of this desert view would pile the blueness
Of a snowy mountain range;
And billowed with its scrolls the bed sheet
Of a cloudscape overhead; 
Across the fiery muzzles of these crowded thunderclouds,
The setting sun
Laid out a set of purple swords…
Their rays were dimming with such lost goodbyes
They grasped my throat with grief and squeezed.
Then I inquired:
                                              “Oh, seer, do teach me this:
How massive are the hurricanes
We're watching break across those granite ridges?!”
                                                      But only thus he answered:
                                                                                            “Right here,
Just when the Day of Final Judgement breaks,
Across these very dried up ocean beds
Three frogs shall carry forth
All tsars and kings of this old world
Into the final scolding of our earthly days.
 
These stones here thirst, since all beginnings,
For intoxicating bile of God’s own grating.
And the name for these parts is – Armageddon”.

     - October the 3rd, 1915
 Biaritz                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Zeppelins Above Paris
To A. N. Ivanova

All day there sounded strings
And hums 
Of watchful birds
From far above.
And afterward the night was writing runes,
These brushings made by lustrous lashes,
That sketched the whole of sky.
Pitch darkness rose from fields nearby 
And stretched across the sky
Then from the crowded canyons of the streets
               An anxious horn rang out…
And one could see it: well lit up
By pale crown’s shine,
Alike a Doric column’s stem,
There hung, within constellation Taurus,
An airship.
While from the ground shot snakes,
And high in the air pummeled hard
A fountain of comets,
But got extinguished next to
Cassiopeia’s stars.
Below, a dimly passive light of buildings
Rippled these immensities;
But no: neither the explosions’ hum
Nor the flow of cannonballs;
Neither starry silence
Nor the springtime cold -
Would it sway at all.
 -April 18th, 1915
Paris

 

Lilac Rays

Oh, violet-woven thunderstorms,
You are - the shadows of a diamond whiteness!
A pair of amethyst-forged Roses
Are shining from a mountain height.

The blood is scorches by crimson flames,
And rubies onto grape vines glow,
And yet I pray to lilac rays
That pierced the heart of ageless Roses.

And I am kneeling on the steps, 
To lilac stains across dark plates,
In shining darkness I am bathed
By raining lilacs mixed with violets.

And the cathedral's ancient columns
Flare with a violet-petaled flame.
Like amethyst, the eyes are sleepless
And burnt down by the lilac day.

- 1907

In Mezza Di Camin

In early youth, while wandering a winding road,
My course once bore me into Dante's murky wood

That’s where my joyful ways were first enchained by worry's hold.


And in these woods I wandered into chance acquaintance
With a young woman who, with eyes deranged,
Was staring ceaselessly into a water basin.

"Our meeting here is more than idle chance,"
I mused and then endeavored an appeal,
"Let's join together and thus travel onwards."

Yet, grasped uncannily by a prophetic trembling,
I kneeled before the sylvan mirror at her feet,
And came by this to share a secret with this maiden.

For suddenly, an apparition spewed out of the mirror depths
The burning visage of the Sun-tongued Beast himself!
I yelled, "Let's leave!". But she, ignoring me, produced

A bird-like scream and, placing in some secret vision all her trust,
She leaped into the abyssal pitch-black glass...
And shaken by her loss down to my bone,

I kept on peering into total darkness, all alone.

- 1907. May 16th. Moscow

 

Russia

A grievous genius is twisting

The warring parties in fraternal knots,

And evil within battlefield’s congestion

Is vanquished by an evil worse.

 

A banner claiming victory now rises -

What are you seeking, Russia, in this sight?

Try to be poor, just for a while, submissive –

Remaining faithful to your cherished fate...

 

I love to see you lie defeated,

Rolled in the dust and gruesomely defiled,

I love to see you furtively enlightened

By all the earth’s vast beauty, well-refined.

 

I love when you take slavish faces,

When over deadened silences of fields

You’re wailing with a woman’s broken voice

Over the body of her young son killed.

 

Your heart, while groveling, would shimmer,

When, tying up your legs with twine,

Your master would begin to whip you,

Backhandedly would whip your timid eyes.

 

You’re strong and to such alien extents

And with unearthly passion you are pure;

With faith that still unquenched remains

And in your mouth would parch the aperture.

 

 

So, give me words to pray for what's to come

And to attempt from your design to learn.

Oh yes, I'll join in your longing and your plight;

Then, with your name upon my lips, I'll burn.

- August 17th, 1915

Biarritz

''On this night...''

On this night

I'll be an oil lamp

In your

Tender hands...

Don't freeze up, don't breath, don't fall

Over stony steps.

 

Carry me most carefully

Through your palace dark;

Will begin to beat in worry,

Deftly, as our hearts...

 

In the cave of your two palms -

Lives a tiny fire -

I can blaze alike the icons...

Would you not ignite me?