Искусствоед
Lawrence Durrell
Card-players: Still-life
Observe then my eyes what I have seen.
Remark the small in asleep among olive-boughs:
The curtain of scavenging flies,
Like hanging beads, in the doorway: and men
Snoozing against an olive-bole or playing
Slow, greasy cards, Thumbed colours of conquest.
At their backs, stacked up under the wall,
Long rows of formal melons in sunlight,
Melodious pippins, bright as lighted butter,
Crushed full of juice in crazy sizes
Between black shadow and shadow.
If you could see my scene, would you believe
That men can slough the creeping pale-skinned north
And become one with the afternoon silences,
With the loungers,
The gnomic card-players in a dead tavern
Out of all time and circumstance?
There's no regret here, nor circumspection.
The sun devours these morsels strip by strip
Until we are one among the brown men,
The respectful snoozers in hats of straw.
Nothing, nothing is vocal now, nothing's to say —
Unless the melons burst their heavy cheeks
And dither in the dust, in uproar,
Haunting the incandescence of the sun!
Parama, Corfu [1935]
(from "Spirit of Place")
Card-players: Still-life
Observe then my eyes what I have seen.
Remark the small in asleep among olive-boughs:
The curtain of scavenging flies,
Like hanging beads, in the doorway: and men
Snoozing against an olive-bole or playing
Slow, greasy cards, Thumbed colours of conquest.
At their backs, stacked up under the wall,
Long rows of formal melons in sunlight,
Melodious pippins, bright as lighted butter,
Crushed full of juice in crazy sizes
Between black shadow and shadow.
If you could see my scene, would you believe
That men can slough the creeping pale-skinned north
And become one with the afternoon silences,
With the loungers,
The gnomic card-players in a dead tavern
Out of all time and circumstance?
There's no regret here, nor circumspection.
The sun devours these morsels strip by strip
Until we are one among the brown men,
The respectful snoozers in hats of straw.
Nothing, nothing is vocal now, nothing's to say —
Unless the melons burst their heavy cheeks
And dither in the dust, in uproar,
Haunting the incandescence of the sun!
Parama, Corfu [1935]
(from "Spirit of Place")