Willa Cather Fides, Spes Joy is come to the little Everywhere; Pink to the peach and pink to the apple, White to the pear. Stars are come to the dogwood, Astral, pale; Mists are pink on the red-bud, Veil after veil. Flutes for the feathery locusts, Soft as spray; Tongues of the lovers for chestnuts, poplars, Babbling May. Yellow plumes for the willows’ Wind-blown hair; Oak trees and sycamores only Comfortless bare. Sore from steel and the watching, Somber and old,— Wooing robes for the beeches, larches, Splashed with gold; Breath o’ love to the lilac, Warm with noon.— Great hearts cold when the little Beat mad so soon. What is their faith to bear it Till it come, Waiting with rain-cloud and swallow, Frozen, dumb?
G. C. Waldrep brief lesson on marriage I asked my wife to check the hive, to see if the hive were burning. (I had no wife, no hive.) Yes, she said, rising up from where she’d been embroidering a new wind. Then —Yes, she said again, only this time a bit more softly.
Djuna Barnes From Fifth Avenue Up Someday beneath some hard Capricious star— Spreading its light a little Over far, We'll know you for the woman That you are.
For though one took you, hurled you Out of space, With your legs half strangled In your lace, You'd lip the world to madness On your face.
читать дальшеWe'd see your body in the grass With cool pale eyes. We'd strain to touch those lang'rous Length of thighs, And hear your short sharp modern Babylonic cries.
It wouldn't go. We'd feel you Coil in fear Leaning across the fertile Fields to leer As you urged some bitter secret Through the ear.
We see your arms grow humid In the heat; We see your damp chemise lie Pulsing in the beat Of the over-hearts left oozing At your feet.
See you sagging down with bulging Hair to sip, The dappled damp from some vague Under lip, Your soft saliva, loosed With orgy, drip.
Once we'd not have called this Woman you— When leaning above your mother's Spleen you drew Your mouth across her breast as Trick musicians do.
Plunging grandly out to fall Upon your face. Naked—female—baby In grimace, With your belly bulging stately Into space.
Robert Frost The Aim Was Song Before man came to blow it right The wind once blew itself untaught, And did its loudest day and night In any rough place where it caught.
Man came to tell it what was wrong: It hadn’t found the place to blow; It blew too hard—the aim was song. And listen—how it ought to go!
He took a little in his mouth, And held it long enough for north To be converted into south, And then by measure blew it forth.
By measure. It was word and note, The wind the wind had meant to be— A little through the lips and throat. The aim was song—the wind could see.
Robert Frost Neither Out Far Nor In Deep The people along the sand All turn and look one way. They turn their back on the land. They look at the sea all day.
As long as it takes to pass A ship keeps raising its hull; The wetter ground like glass Reflects a standing gull.
The land may vary more; But wherever the truth may be--- The water comes ashore, And the people look at the sea.
They cannot look out far. They cannot look in deep. But when was that ever a bar To any watch they keep?
Joseph Trumbull Near Helikon By such an all-embalming summer day As sweetens now among the mountain pines Down to the cornland yonder and the vines, To where the sky and sea are mixed in gray, How do all things together take their way Harmonious to the harvest, bringing wines And bread and light and whatsoe’er combines In the large wreath to make it round and gay. To me my troubled life doth now appear Like scarce distinguishable summits hung Around the blue horizon: places where Not even a traveller purposeth to steer, – Whereof a migrant bird in passing sung, And the girl closed her window not to hear.
Мацуо Басё Из путевого дневника «Письма странствующего поэта»* Там, куда улетает Крик предрассветный кукушки, Что там? — далекий остров.
("По тропинкам севера: стихи из путевого дневника", 2017)
Пер. В. Маркова
*В оригинале этот дневник носит название «Ои-но кобуми», то есть письма из ои — небольшой сумы, которую буддийские монахи носили на шее. В ней хранились священные изображения и дорожные принадлежности.
Ingeborg Bachmann Gedichte 1964-1967 Enigma für Hans Werner Henze aus der Zeit der Ariosi
Ingeborg Bachmann The Collected Poems Poems 1964-1967 Enigma for Hans Werner Henze at the time of Ariosi* Nothing more will come. **
Spring will no longer flourish. Millenial calendars forecast it already.
But also summer and more, sweet words such as "summery" — nothing more will come.
You mustn't cry, *** says the music.
Otherwise no one says anything.
transl. by Peter Filkins
*Hans Werner Henze's Ariosi is a musical setting pf poems by Torquato Tasso (1544-1595). **Kurt Bartsch points out that "Nichts mehr wird kommen" ("Nothing more will come") is a line from the "Peter Altenberglieder" By Alban Berg,
Ingeborg Bachmann Gedichte 1964-1967 Wahrlich für Anna Achmatova
Ingeborg Bachmann The Collected Poems Poems 1964-1967 Truly for Anna Akhmatova* To one who's never been stunned by a word, and I say it to you all, who only knows how to help himself and only with words —
he cannot be helped. Not over the short term and not over the long.
To create a single lasting sentence, to persevere in the ding-dong of words.
No one writes this sentence who does not sign her name.
transl. by Peter Filkins
*Bachmann met Akhmatova in Rome in late 1964 and published this poem in 1965. In 1967, Bachmann left her publisher, R. Piper Verlag, in protest against their publication of Akhmatova's selected poems in a translation done by Hans Baumann, a poet embraced by the Nazis. After publishing "Malina" with Suhrkamp Verlag, she later returned to Piper.