Искусствоед
Lawrence Durrell
A Persian Lady
Some diplomatic mission - no such thing as "fate" -
Brought her to the city that ripening spring.
She was much pointed out - a Lady-in Waiting -
To some Persian noble; well, and here she was
Merry and indolent amidst fashionable abundance.
By day under a saffron parasol on royal beaches,
By night in queer crocketed tent with tassels.
He noted the perfected darkness of her beauty,
The mind recoiling as from a branding-iron:
The sea advancing and retiring at her laquered toes;
How would one say "to enflame" in her tongue,
He wondered, knowing it applied to female beauty?
When their eyes met he felt dis-figured
It would have been simple - three paces apart!
Disloyal time! The let the seminal instant go,
The code unbroken, the collision of ripening wishes
Bandoned to hiss on the great syllabaries of memory.
Next day he deliberately left the musical city
To join a boring water-party on the lake.
Telling himself "Say what you like about it,
I have been spared very much in this business."
He meant, I think, that never should he now
Know the slow disgracing of her mind, the slow
Spiral of her beauty's deterioration, flagging desires,
The stagnant fury of the temporal yoke,
Grey temple, long slide into fat.
On the other hand neither would she build him sons
Or be a subject for verses - the famished in-bred poetry
Which was the fashion of his time and ours.
She would exist, pure, symmetrical and intact
Like the sterile hyphen which divides and joins
In a biography the year of birth and death.
A Persian Lady
Some diplomatic mission - no such thing as "fate" -
Brought her to the city that ripening spring.
She was much pointed out - a Lady-in Waiting -
To some Persian noble; well, and here she was
Merry and indolent amidst fashionable abundance.
By day under a saffron parasol on royal beaches,
By night in queer crocketed tent with tassels.
He noted the perfected darkness of her beauty,
The mind recoiling as from a branding-iron:
The sea advancing and retiring at her laquered toes;
How would one say "to enflame" in her tongue,
He wondered, knowing it applied to female beauty?
When their eyes met he felt dis-figured
It would have been simple - three paces apart!
Disloyal time! The let the seminal instant go,
The code unbroken, the collision of ripening wishes
Bandoned to hiss on the great syllabaries of memory.
Next day he deliberately left the musical city
To join a boring water-party on the lake.
Telling himself "Say what you like about it,
I have been spared very much in this business."
He meant, I think, that never should he now
Know the slow disgracing of her mind, the slow
Spiral of her beauty's deterioration, flagging desires,
The stagnant fury of the temporal yoke,
Grey temple, long slide into fat.
On the other hand neither would she build him sons
Or be a subject for verses - the famished in-bred poetry
Which was the fashion of his time and ours.
She would exist, pure, symmetrical and intact
Like the sterile hyphen which divides and joins
In a biography the year of birth and death.