main page, here
Юнна Мориц
Yunna Morits
|
ПЯТЬ СТИХОТВОРЕНИЙ О БОЛЕЗНИ МОЕЙ МАТЕРИ
1.
Белизна, белизна
поднебесная,
4.
Беда моя
огромна,
Не тронь костра.
Так полежи.
А я посижу на
больничном дворе.
Весна придет!
Весна придет!
5
Прилетела птичья
стая
Не падай,
слезка,
1963
|
Three lyrics from Poems for my Sick Mother I
Whiteness the whiteness of these skies heavily clamping down over our bodies; when the time comes our souls will pass through you only too easily. So here I am, Lord, blocking my mother’s entrance to paradise ready to curse the light blue roof of it however you harass me into the cracks like a snake. I won’t give her up to you yet gnawing stones and howling where I sit. I shall refuse to let my mother past.
IV
Misfortune is as huge and heavy as this cold I’m half dead. Without home. Without a roof or wing Alone under bare skies. A stump of birchwood chair my table drowned by rain abandoned, covered in snow.
My pages rustled through by icy winds. Mother! Snow-girl. Small bird. Snow-girl. Don’t touch the fire! The bonfire. Lie quite still. Like a water drop on sand like a red tear on my cheek. Don’t touch! Lie quite still.
Don’t touch the fire. Lie there. Perhaps death will bold back. And spring will come. Spring! With peas and beans returning a star will fall in the well or a single drop of dew. Spring birds where are you flying? A frail old woman can so easily dwindle away to nothing before you return. It’s hard not to!
I wait in the hospital courtyard and sitting here make up my prayer. Trees. Trees. Lake. Lake. While there is time to spare before my mothers small body is bruised yellow and blue. Please. Give me a small piece of spring, whose time will come anyway, spring always comes: beans appear, peas come up, and small prickly cucumbers. I won’t believe it, I won’t believe it. No.
It is impossible mother should go for ever before the first strawberries. And yet the stars are bright over the fields. There is snow in the wind over the poplars. Against the wall a snowdrift. Like a breast. And we are children. Grant us a little spring!
V
A flight of bird s has arrived in their many coloured coats. In the yard grass is thick like fur on a baby bear – on a green bear, yes, a green one, the smallest and the youngest bear. People are walking about, and animals. Bless all walkers! Look, the city will survive., every village will survive. For the son will shine in the light blue heights again. The pear will come to fruit, like potato, like wheat ... And Mother is learning to walk.
Don’t fall, don’t fall, little tear, It mustn’t be slippery for her!
|
|
Midnight cold of oxygen bronze vitriol of stars: spirals of scorching roses are kindled around my window
and nobody moves along the empty path in the distance where I see a tall shadow, too tall for any human.
I recognise the Muse. Her steps sing every syllable. At the sound, roses break loose and float down to her feet.
Her wide stare is serious her lips are full and firm. Look how she moves right through that splendid thought - a bush -
to be lit up by a storm even as she walks the clouds bearing a dark-red parcel of roses in toil-worn hands.
|
|
ПАМЯТИ ФРАНСУА РАБЛЕ
Чудесно рухнуть на опушку! Спиной - в тюфяк, щекой - в подушку, И нежной ленью овладеть Не по верхам, а в совершенстве, Чтобы в растительном блаженстве, Как шмель над клевером, гудеть!
Пластом - в простор! Двумя руками Обнять траву с ее жуками, Глотать зверинца аромат. Из кожи - вон! И в эти кущи, Где краток век, народы гуще, Иные краски и формат.
В раю не держат изваяний! Он - для купаний, для валяний И для других счастливых дел! И не повальное жеманство, А здравый дух раблезианства Там населеньем овладел.
На лучший мир не уповая, Цветет культура смеховая, Комедиантство, анекдот, Пьерро танцует в балагане На барабане, гол как в бане,- И развлекает свой народ.
Когда смешное хлещет в уши, Само бессмертье хлещет в души, Как виноградное вино, И в передышке все забыто: Короткий век, угрюмство быта, И все трагичное - смешно!
Легко вернешься в муравейник, Согреешь на плите кофейник, На ужин зелень пожуешь. Равно простейшим и приматом, Ты насладишься ароматом Того, что длишься и живешь!
Благословенна передышка, Когда хохочешь, как мартышка, Над роком, смертью и судьбой, Над женщиной и над мужчиной! Проверка вольностью бесчинной - Осталась ли душа с тобой!
Иначе в бытности суровой, Где дрожь горячки нездоровой Нас бьет в тщеславии пустом,- Возможны всякие потери! Душа найдет прореху в теле, А возвратит ее потом Рогатый скот у адской двери.
1966
|
In Memory of François Rabelais
To lie at the edge of the forest with your face in the earth is miraculous for idleness is tender, and can be possessed entirely in vegetable joy just as bees sing into clover.
Feel the space under the planer. Hold on to grass and beetles. Gulp down the smell of the zoo on your own skin. We live among fair booths, where time is short, packed in together densely.
In paradise no more idols!
People do
what they like roles the whole population there.
No better world to wait for! Laughter rises easily and stories. Pierrot can dance on his drum as naked as if he were in a bath-house. The show is for everyone.
When laughter beats in your ears, your soul knows it’s immortal.
The freedom
is like a mouthful
Now go back to your anthill, put coffee on the stove there. Chew at your greens for supper. Enjoy the simplest flavour, and as you do so savour the strangeness of carrying on!
Once you can shout and laugh Like e monkey at death and fate . and how men and women act the pause is wholly blessed. A laugh is the outrageous; sign that your soul remains alive.
Unhealthy fevers shake us in this stern world. Tormented, by chasing after success, we may lose all we possess. Even our souls may leak away then, and only return to us with Hell and horned beasts!
|
|
В серебряном столбе Рождественского снега Отправимся к себе На поиски ночлега,
Носком одной ноги Толкнем другую в пятку И снимем сапоги, Не повредив заплатку.
В кофейниках шурша, Гадательный напиток Напомнит, что душа - Не мера, а избыток,
И что талант - не смесь Всего, что любят люди, А худшее, что есть, И лучшее, что будет.
|
Now we’ll go homeward in search of a bed in a silver pillar of Christmas snow
and there with one toe push the heel of the other and so take our boots off without any bother:
then inside the coffee pot some strange drink rustles. We are reminded how no soul is bounded;
and no talent can be a convenient mixture of things that we like only but what is best and what is worst.
|
|
И колокол в
дупле часовенки пустой,
Вокруг питался
юг безумствами долин,
Вознаграждался
труд лихвой фруктовых груд
Их сок и жир
течет, и начат новый счет,
Пускай
устройство дней совсем оголено -
1964
|
The bell in the hollow chapel and the bell in the throat of the donkey fill me with love. Such depths their beauty opens to me.
Here southern valleys feed on mad fruitfulness! Asian teahouse noises rise in a garden of persimmons, mandarins, feikhoas.
How easily work is rewarded with crops here! Rather as the herds of those going straight to the braziers and bonfires of hell multiply! The world after death is another great enterprise!
New accounts for it open. Juice and fat begin to flow. Sweet smoke goes up the chimney. But we still want our freedom, and long to live with nothing to darken our fate, don’t we?
Even though the way our days are arranged has been exposed to the bone, to the Hiroshima bomb. We must bold on, keep going, you must understand, without my love your world is unbearable.
|
|
Translations into English by Elaine Feinstein, from Elaine Feinstein, Collected Poems and Translations, Poetry Pléiade, Carcanet Press, Manchester, 2002. ISBN 1 85754 566 4 |