I one day will die – we are always dying at times,
I wish death not on my own accord, but by a knife to my spine:
The murdered are spared, given tickets to paradise,
But I won't speak of the living, but of the rested.
My face will hit the dirt, turn on its good side,
And my fallen soul will gallop up the hill on a stolen jade horse.
In those glorious gardens of paradise, I will gather purple-pale apples.
However, these gardens are guarded and they shoot you between the eyes.
Galloping up, I see before my eyes no kind of paradise:
Only a barren desert and all around— infinite nothingness.
And in between rise cast-iron gates and
A massive Иtape of five thousand sitting on their knees.
How my horse whines! I calm him with affectionate words,
But the burrs have almost but torn away his mane.
The old man gatekeeper struggles with the bolt too long—
Failing to open it, he grunts and grumbles, and leaves.
And the exhausted mass produce not one squeak.
They squat, their knees growing numb from it all.
A den of thieves, brothers, I hear the pealing of bells!
Returning full circle, He hangs crucified on the cross.
Blessings have been bestowed upon me, would I have wanted more?
Just my friends and my wife— let her fall on my coffin.
I will pick for them some of those pale apples,
But the gardens are guarded, and they shoot you between the eyes.
I know this old man by the tears upon his worn cheeks:
It is Saint Peter— he is an apostle, I am just a fool.
Here is the orchard, with a lot of frozen apples,
But the gardens are guarded, and they have just started shooting between
the eyes.
So I drive my horse away, from this wretched hellhole.
Though the horses are begging for oats, I can't stop biting at the bit.
Along the cliff, with a lash, on the precipice, clutching apples
For you I bring them: you are waiting for me from paradise.
Something savage from my beloved Mayakovski, 1917: To All and Everything
No.
It can’t be.
No!
You too, beloved?
Why? What for?
Darling, look -
I came,
I brought flowers,
but, but... I never took
silver spoons from your drawer!
Ashen-faced,
I staggered down five flights of stairs.
The street eddied round me. Blasts. Blares.
Tires screeched.
It was gusty.
The wind stung my cheeks.
Horn mounted horn lustfully.
Above the capital’s madness
I raised my face,
stern as the faces of ancient icons.
Sorrow-rent,
on your body as on a death-bed, its days
my heart ended.
You did not sully your hands with brute murder.
Instead,
you let drop calmly:
“He’s in bed.
There’s fruit and wine
On the bedstand’s palm.”
Love!
You only existed in my inflamed brain.
Enough!
Stop this foolish comedy
and take notice:
I’m ripping off
my toy armour,
I,
the greatest of all Don Quixotes!
Remember?
Weighed down by the cross,
Christ stopped for a moment,
weary.
Watching him, the mob
yelled, jeering:
“Get movin’, you clod!”
That’s right!
Be spiteful.
Spit upon him who begs for a rest
on his day of days,
harry and curse him.
To the army of zealots, doomed to do good,
man shows no mercy!
That does it!
I swear by my pagan strength -
gimme a girl,
young,
eye-filling,
and I won’t waste my feelings on her.
I'll rape her
and spear her heart with a gibe
willingly.
An eye for an eye!
A thousand times over reap of revenge the crops'
Never stop!
Petrify, stun,
howl into every ear:
“The earth is a convict, hear,
his head half shaved by the sun!”
An eye for an eye!
Kill me,
bury me -
I’ll dig myself out,
the knives of my teeth by stone — no wonder!-
made sharper,
A snarling dog, under
the plank-beds of barracks I’ll crawl,
sneaking out to bite feet that smell
of sweat and of market stalls!
You'll leap from bed in the night’s early hours.
“Moo!” I’ll roar.
Over my neck,
a yoke-savaged sore,
tornados of flies
will rise.
I'm a white bull over the earth towering!
Into an elk I’ll turn,
my horns-branches entangled in wires,
my eyes red with blood.
Above the world,
a beast brought to bay,
I'll stand tirelessly.
Man can’t escape!
Filthy and humble,
a prayer mumbling,
on cold stone he lies.
What I’ll do is paint
on the royal gates,
over God’s own
the face of Razin.
Dry up, rivers, stop him from quenching his thirst! Scorn him!
Don’t waste your rays, sun! Glare!
Let thousands of my disciples be born
to trumpet anathemas on the squares!
And when at last there comes,
stepping onto the peaks of the ages,
chillingly,
the last of their days,
in the black souls of anarchists and killers
I, a gory vision, will blaze!
It’s dawning,
The sky’s mouth stretches out more and more,
it drinks up the night
sip by sip, thirstily.
The windows send off a glow.
Through the panes heat pours.
The sun, viscous, streams down onto the sleeping city.
O sacred vengeance!
Lead me again
above the dust without
and up the steps of my poetic lines.
This heart of mine,
full to the brim,
in a confession
I will pour out.
Men of the future!
Who are you?
I must know. Please!
Here am I,
all bruises and aches,
pain-scorched...
To you of my great soul I bequeath
the orchard.
Listen, if stars are lit it means - there is someone who needs it. It means - someone wants them to be, that someone deems those specks of spit magnificent.
And overwrought, in the swirls of afternoon dust, he bursts in on God, afraid he might be already late. In tears, he kisses God's sinewy hand and begs him to guarantee that there will definitely be a star. He swears he won't be able to stand that starless ordeal.
Later, He wanders around, worried, but outwardly calm.
And to everyone else, he says: 'Now, it's all right. You are no longer afraid, are you?'
Listen, if stars are lit, it means - there is someone who needs it. It means it is essential that every evening at least one star should ascend over the crest of the building.
Vladimir Vysotsky, "Common Grave". Here I treat Vysotsky's songs as poem, because he himself said many a time that he is not a singer, but a "poet with guitar", a bard; and his poems are not songs, but poems that are set to music, and is supposed to be presented with rhythmic accompaniment. For all soldiers everywhere.
Paul Verlaine is my next project on this thread. He lived a relatively short life, from 1844–1896, and in this time became one of the most important figures in the French symbolism movement. Here is a goo bio in him http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/paul-verlaine .
Autumn Song
With long sobs the violin-throbs of autumn wound my heart with languorous and montonous sound.
Choking and pale When I mind the tale the hours keep, my memory strays down other days and I weep;
and I let me go where ill winds blow now here, now there, harried and sped, even as a dead leaf, anywhere.
Veleda was a German priestess and prophetess who became prominent in the Batavian Rebellion in 70-69 BC, Tacitus mentioned her. She was considered a living divinity, because in this time the Germanic tribes considered any prophetesses as real deities. Statues of her became very popular as garden ornaments in 19 century.
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