Стихотворения - Владимир Набоков

461. THE SWALLOW{*}

When prying idly into NatureI am paticularly fondof watching the arrow of a swallowover the sunset of a pond.

See — there it goes, and skims, and glances:the alien element, I fear,roused from its glassy sleep might captureblack lightning quivering so near.

There — once again that fearless shadowover a frowning ripple ran.Have we not here the living imageof active poetry in man —

of something leading me, banned mortal,to venture where I dare not stop —striving to scoop from a forbiddenmysterious element one drop?

Фёдор Тютчев{*}

462. NIGHTFALL{*}

Down from her head the earth has rolledthe low sun like a redhot ball.Down went the evening's peaceful blazeand seawaves have absorbed it all.

Heavy and near the sky had seemed.But now the stars are rising high,they glow and with their humid headspush up the ceiling of the sky.

The river of the air betweenheaven and earth now fuller flows.The breast is ridded of the heatand breaths in freedom and repose.

And now there goes through Nature's veinsa liquid shiver, swift and sweet,as though the waters of a springhad come to touch her burning feet.

463. TEARS{*}

O lacrimarum fons.

Friends, with my eyes I love caressingthe purple of a flashing wine,nor do I scorn the fragrant rubyof clustered fruit that leaves entwine.

I love to look around when Natureseems as it were immersed in May;when bathed in redolence she slumbersand smiles throughout her dreamy day.

I love to see the face of Beautyflushed with the air of Spring that seekssoftly to toy with silky ringletsor deepen dimples on her cheeks.

But all voluptuous enchantments,lush grapes, rich roses — what are youcompared to tears, that sacred fountain,that paradisal morning dew!

Therein divinest beams are mirrored,and in those burning drops they break,and breaking — what resplendent rainbowsupon Life's thunderclouds they make!

As soon as mortal eyes thou touchest,with wings, Angel of Tears, the worlddissolves in mist, and lo! a skyfulof Seraph faces is unfurled.

464. THE JOURNEY{*}

Soft sand comes up to our horses' shanks   as we ride in the darkening dayand the shadows of pines have closed their ranks:   all is shadow along our way.

In denser masses the black trees rise.   what a comfortless neighborhood!Grim night like a beast with a hundred eyes   peers out of the underwood.

465. SILENTIUM!{*}

Speak not, lie hidden, and concealthe way you dream, the things you feel.Deep in your spirit let them riseakin to stars in crystal skiesthat set before the night is blurred:delight in them and speak no word.

How can a heart expression find?How should another know your mind?Will he discern what quickens you?A thought once uttered is untrue.Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:drink at the source and speak no word.

Live in your inner self alonewithin your soul a world has grown,the magic of veiled thoughts that mightbe blended by the outer light,drowned in the noise of day, unheard…take in their song and speak no word.

466. LAST LOVE{*}

Love at the closing of our daysis apprehensive and very tender.Glow brighter, brighter, farewell raysof one last love in its evening splendor.

Blue shade takes half the world away:through western clouds alone some light is slanted.О tarry, О tarry, declining day,enchantment, let me stay enchanted.

The blood runs thinner, yet the heartremains as ever deep and tender.О last belated love, thou arta blend of joy and of hopeless surrender.

467. DUSK{*}

Now the ashen shadows mingle,tints are faded, sounds remote.Life has dwindled to a singlevague reverberating note.In the dusk I hear the hummingof a moth I cannot see.Whence is this oppression coming?I'm in all, and all's in me.

Gloom so dreamy, gloom so lulling,flow into my deepest deep,flow, ambrosial and dulling,steeping everything in sleep.With oblivion's obscurationfill my senses to the brim,make me taste obliteration,in this dimness let me dim.

468. THE ABYSS{*}

When sacred Night sweeps heavenward, she takesthe glad, the winsome day, and folding it,rolls up its golden carpet that had beenspread over an abyssmal pit.

Gone vision-like is the external world,and man, a homeless orphan, has to facein utter helplessness, naked, alone,the blackness of immeasurable space.

Upon himself he has to lean; with mindabolished, thought unfathered, in the dimdepths of his soul he sinks, for nothing comesfrom outside to support or limit him.

All life and brightness seem an ancient dream —while in the very substance of the night,unravelled, alien, he now perceivesa fateful something that is his by right.

469. AUTUMN{*}

When Autumn has just come, there ismost brief a lull: brief but divine.All day 'tis like some precious prism,and limpidly the evenings shine.

Where lusty sickles swung and corn-ears bentthe plain is empty now: wider it seems.Alone a silky filamentacross the idle furrow gleams.

The airy void, now birdless, is revealed,but still remote is the first whirl of snow;and stainless skies in mellow blueness flowupon the hushed reposing field.

470. APPEASEMENT{*}

The storm withdrew, but Thor had found his oak,and there it lay magnificently slain,and from its limbs a remnant of blue smokespread to bright trees repainted by the rain —

— while thrush and oriole made haste to mendtheir broken melodies throughout the grove,upon the crests of which was propped the endof a virescent rainbow edged with mauve.

471. TEARS{*}

Human tears. О the tears! you that flowwhen life is begun — or half-gone,tears unseen, tears unknown, you that nonecan number or drain, you that runlike the streamlets of rain from the lowclouds of Autumn, long before dawn…

Владислав Ходасевич{*}

472. THE MONKEY{*}

The heat was fierce. Great forests were on fire.Time dragged its feet in dust. A cock was crowingin an adjacent lot.                     As I pushed openmy garden-gate I saw beside the roada wandering Serb asleep upon a benchhis back against the palings. He was leanand very black, and down his half-bared breastthere hung a heavy silver cross, divertingthe trickling sweat.                      Upon the fence above him,clad in a crimson petticoat, his monkeysat munching greedily the dusty leavesof a syringa bush; a leathern collardrawn backwards by its heavy chain bit deepinto her throat.                 Hearing me pass, the manstirred, wiped his face and asked me for some water.He took one sip to see whether the drinkwas not too cold, then placed a saucerfulupon the bench, and, instantly, the monkeyslipped down and clasped the saucer with both handsdipping her thumbs; then, on all fours, she drank,her elbows pressed against the bench, her chintouching the boards, her backbone arching higherthan her bald head. Thus, surely, did Dariusbend to a puddle on the road when fleeingfrom Alexander's thundering phalanges.When the last drop was sucked the monkey sweptthe saucer off the bench, and raised her head,and offered me her black wet little hand.Oh, I have pressed the fingers of great poets,leaders of men, fair women, but no handhad ever been so exquisitely shapednor had touched mine with such a thrill of kinship,and no man's eyes had peered into my soulwith such deep wisdom… Legends of lost agesawoke in me thanks to that dingy beastand suddenly I saw life in its fullnessand with a rush of wind and wave and worldsthe organ music of the universeboomed in my ears, as it had done beforein immemorial woodlands.                               And the Serbthen went his way thumping his tambourine:on his left shoulder, like an Indian princeupon an elephant, his monkey swayed.A huge incarnadine but sunless sunhung in a milky haze. The sultry summerflowed endlessly upon the wilting wheat.

That day the war broke out, that very day.

473. POEM{*}

What is the use time and rhyme?We live in peril, paupers all.The tailors sit, the builders climb,but coats will tear and houses fall.

And only seldom with a sobof tenderness I hear… oh, quitea different existence throbthrough this mortality and blight.

Thus does a wife, when days are dull,place breathlessly, with loving care,her hand upon her body, fullof the live burden swelling there.

474. ORPHEUS{*}

Brightly lit from above I am sittingin my circular room; this is I —looking up at a sky made of stucco,at a sixty-watt sun in that sky.

All around me, and also lit brightly,all around me my furniture stands,chair and table and bed — and I wondersitting there what to do with my hands.

Frost-engendered white feathery palmtreeson the window-panes silently bloom;loud and quick clicks the watch in my pocketas I sit in my circular room.

Oh, the leaden, the beggarly barenessof a life where no issue I see!Whom on earth could I tell how I pitymy own self and the things around me?

And then clasping my knees I start slowlyto sway backwards and forwards, and soonI am speaking in verse, I am crooningto myself as I sway in a swoon.

What a vague, what a passionate murmurlacking any intelligent plan;but a sound may be truer than reasonand a word may be stronger than man.

And then melody, melody, melodyblends my accents and joins in their quest,and a delicate, delicate, delicatepointed blade seems to enter my breast.

High above my own spirit I tower,high above mortal matter I grow:subterranean flames lick my ankles,past my brow the cool galaxies flow.

With big eyes — as my singing grows wilder —with the eyes of a serpent maybe,I keep watching the helpless expressionof the poor things that listen to me.

And the room and the furniture slowly,slowly start in a circle to sail,and a great heavy lyre is from nowherehanded me by a ghost through the gale.

And the sixty-watt sun has now vanished,and away the false heavens are blown:on the smoothness of glossy black bouldersthis is Orpheus standing alone.

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