Nor old heart's wisdom yet to know
The signs that mock me as I go.
Zurich, 1918
БАНХОФШТРАССЕ
Глумливых взглядов череда
Ведет меня сквозь города.
Сквозь сумрак дня, сквозь ночи синь
Мерцает мне звезда полынь.
О светоч ада! светоч зла!
И молодость моя прошла,
И старой мудрости оплот
Не защитит и не спасет.
Цюрих, 1918
A PRAYER
Again!
Come, give, yield all your strength to me!
From far a low word breathes on the breaking brain
Its cruel calm, submission's misery,
Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined.
Cease, silent love! My doom!
Blind me with your dark nearness, О have mercy,
beloved enemy of my will!
I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread.
Draw from me still
My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening head,
Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying
Him who is, him who was!
Again!
Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth. I hear
From far her low word breathe on my breaking brain.
Come! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am here.
Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only anguish,
Take me, save me, soothe me, О spare me!
Paris, 1924
МОЛЬБА
Вот снова!
Приди, отдай мне все, ты — мой!
Зовет из мрака вкрадчивое слово
С жестокой силой, с кротостью слепой,
Как бы смиряя ужас в обреченном.
Молчи, любовь! Мой рок!
Накрой меня своею темнотой, о, сжалься,
враг мой милый!
Невыносимым хладом лба коснись,
Вытягивай живые жилы
Из сердца! Ниже, ниже наклонись,
Грозя и муча, мстя и сострадая
За все, чем стал, чем был!
Вот снова!
Из шелеста ночного, ветрового, из тьмы, что впереди,
Зовет чуть слышно вкрадчивое слово,
Терзая слух и мозг: приди, приди!
Я здесь. Я — твой, блаженный мой мучитель!
Прими, утешь, спаси! О, пощади!
Париж, 1924
Стихи на случай
THE HOLY OFFICE
Myself unto myself will give
This name Katharsis-Purgative.
I, who disheveled ways forsook
To hold the poets' grammar-book,
Bringing to tavern and to brothel
The mind of witty Aristotle,
Lest bards in the attempt should err
Must here be my interpreter:
Wherefore receive now from my lip
Peripatetic scholarship.
To enter heaven, travel hell,
Be piteous or terrible
One positively needs the ease,
Of plenary indulgences.
For every true-born mysticist
A Dante is, unprejudiced,
Who safe at ingle-nook, by proxy,
Hazards extremes of heterodoxy,
Like him who finds a joy at table
Pondering the uncomfortable.
Ruling one's life by common sense
How can one fail to be intense?
But I must not accounted be
One of that mumming company
With him who hies him to appease
His giddy dames' frivolities
While they console him when he whinges
With gold-embroidered Celtic fringes —
Or him who sober all the day
Mixes a naggin in his play —
Or him who conduct 'seems to own',
His preference for a man of 'tone' —
Or him who plays the rugged patch
To millionaires in Hazelhatch
But weeping after holy fast
Confesses all his pagan past —
Or him who will his hat unfix
Neither to malt nor crucifix
But show to all that poor-dressed be
His high Castilian courtesy —
Or him who loves his Master dear —
Or him who drinks his pint in fear —
Or him who once when snug abed
Saw Jesus Christ without his head
And tried so hard to win for us
The long-lost works of Eschylus.
But all these men of whom I speak
Make me the sewer of their clique.
That they may dream their dreamy dreams
I carry off their filthy streams
For I can do those things for them
Through which I lost my diadem,
Those things for which Grandmother Church
Left me severely in the lurch.
Thus I relieve their timid arses,
Perform my office of Katharsis.
My scarlet leaves them white as wool
Through me they purge a bellyful.
To sister mummers one and all
I act as vicar-general
And for each maiden, shy and nervous,
I do a similar kind service.
For I detect without surprise
That shadowy beauty in her eyes,
The 'dare not' of sweet maidenhood
That answers my corruptive would'.
Whenever publicly we meet
She never seems to think of it;
At night when close in bed she lies
And feels my hand between her thighs
My little love in light attire
Knows the soft flame that is desire.
But Mammon places under ban
The uses of Leviathan
And that high spirit ever wars
On Mammon's countless servitors
Nor can they ever be exempt
From his taxation of contempt.
So distantly I turn to view
The shamblings of that motley crew,
Those souls that hate the strength that mine has
Steeled in the school of old Aquinas.
Where they have crouched and crawled and prayed
I stand the self-doomed, unafraid,
Unfellowed, friendless and alone,
Indifferent as the herring-bone,
Firm as the mountain-ridges where