Its twisting length was wound.
The body of the serpent,
Like a whip’s lash,
Swayed about, just grazing
The shoulder of the girl.
The custom of that country
Was to bestow the prize
Of a captive beauty
On the monster in the woods.
The local population
Had agreed to pay this tax
Each year to the serpent
In ransom for their huts.
The serpent wound and bound her
And tightened on her neck,
Having received this tribute
To torture as it liked.
With a plea the horseman
Looked to the lofty sky
And prepared for battle,
His lance set at the tilt.
———
Tightly shut eyelids.
Lofty heights. Clouds.
Waters. Fords. Rivers.
Years and centuries.
The rider, without helmet,
Knocked down in the fight,
The faithful steed tramples
The serpent with his hoof.
Steed and dragon body
There upon the sand.
The rider is unconscious,
And the maiden stunned.
The heavenly vault at noonday
Shines with a tender blue.
Who is she? A royal princess?
A daughter of the earth? A queen?
First in a flood of happiness
Her tears pour out in streams,
Then her soul is mastered
By sleep and oblivion.
He first feels health returning,
But then his veins go still,
For his strength is failing
From loss of so much blood.
Yet their hearts keep beating.
And now she, and now he
Tries to awaken fully,
And then falls back to sleep.
Tightly shut eyelids.
Lofty heights. Clouds.
Waters. Fords. Rivers.
Years and centuries.
14
August
This morning, faithful to its promise,
The early sun seeped through the room
In an oblique strip of saffron
From the curtains to the couch.
It covered with its burning ochre
The nearby woods, the village homes,
My bedstead and my still moist pillow,
The edge of wall behind the books.
Then I remembered the reason why
My pillowcase was slightly damp.
I had dreamed you were walking through the woods
One after another to see me off.
You walked in a crowd, singly, in pairs,
Then someone remembered that today
Was the sixth of August, old style,
The Transfiguration of Our Lord.
Ordinarily a flameless light
Issues on this day from Tabor,
And autumn, clear as a sign held up,
Rivets all gazes to itself.
And you walked through little, beggarly,
Naked, trembling alder scrub
To the spicy red woods of the graveyard
Burning like stamped gingerbread.
The sky superbly played the neighbor
To the hushed crowns of its trees,
And distances called to each other
In the drawn-out voices of the cocks.
Death, like a government surveyor,
Stood in the woods among the graves,
Scrutinizing my dead face,
So as to dig the right-sized hole.
You had the physical sensation
Of someone’s quiet voice beside you.
It was my old prophetic voice
Sounding, untouched by decay:
“Farewell, azure of Transfiguration,
Farewell, the Second Savior’s gold.
Ease with a woman’s last caress
The bitterness of my fatal hour.
“Farewell, years fallen out of time!
Farewell, woman: to an abyss
Of humiliations you threw down
The challenge! I am your battlefield.
“Farewell, the sweep of outspread wings,
The willful stubbornness of flight,
And the image of the world revealed in words,
And the work of creation, and working miracles.”
15
A Winter Night
It snowed, it snowed over all the world
From end to end.
A candle burned on the table,
A candle burned.
As swarms of midges in summertime
Fly towards a flame,
Snowflakes flew from the dark outside
Into the window frame.
The blizzard fashioned rings and arrows
On the frosty glass.
A candle burned on the table,
A candle burned.
Shadows lay on the ceiling
In the candlelight,
Crossings of arms, crossings of legs,
Crossings of destiny.
And two little shoes dropped down
With a thump on the floor,
And wax tears from the night-light
Dripped on a dress.
And all was lost in the snowy murk,
Hoary and white.
A candle burned on the table,
A candle burned.
It blew at the candle from the corner,
And the heat of seduction
Raised up two wings like an angel,
Cruciform.
It snowed through all of February,
And time and again
A candle burned on the table,
A candle burned.
16
Separation
The man looks from the threshold,
Not recognizing his home.
Her departure was more like flight.
Havoc’s traces are everywhere.
All the rooms are in chaos.
The extent of the destruction
Escapes him because of his tears
And an attack of migraine.
Some humming in his ears since morning.
Is he conscious or dreaming?
And why does the thought of the sea
Keep coming to his mind?
When God’s world cannot be seen
Through the hoarfrost on the windows,
The hopelessness of anguish resembles
The waste of the sea twice over.
She was as dear to him
In her every feature
As the coast is near the sea
Along the line of breakers.
As waves drown the reeds
In the aftermath of a storm,
So her forms and features
Sank to the bottom of his soul.
In years of affliction, in times
Of unthinkable daily life,
She was thrown to him from the bottom
By the wave of destiny.
Amidst obstacles without number,
Past dangers in its way,
The wave bore her, bore her
And brought her right to him.
And now here is her departure,
A forced one, it may be.
Separation will devour them both,
Anguish will gnaw their bones.
And the man looks around him:
At the moment of leaving
She turned everything upside down,
Emptying the dresser drawers.
He wanders about and till nightfall
Keeps putting scattered scraps
Of fabric and pattern samples
Back into the drawer.
And pricking himself on a needle
Stuck into some sewing,
All at once he sees the whole of her
&
nbsp; And quietly starts to weep.
17
Meeting
Snow will cover the roads,
It will heap up on the rooftops.
I’ll go out to stretch my legs:
You’re standing near the door.
Alone in a fall coat,
Without hat, without warm boots,
You’re fighting back agitation
And chewing the wet snow.
Trees and lattice fences
Go off into the murk.
Alone amidst the snowfall,
You stand at the corner.
Water runs from your kerchief
Down your sleeve to the cuff,
And drops of it like dewdrops
Sparkle in your hair.
And a flaxen strand
Illuminates: your face,
Your kerchief and your figure,
And that skimpy coat.
Snow moist on your lashes,
Anguish in your eyes,
And your entire aspect
Is formed of a single piece.
As if with iron dipped
In liquid antimony,
You have been engraved
Into my very heart.
And the meekness of those features
Is lodged in it forever,
And therefore it’s no matter
That the world’s hardhearted.
And therefore everything
On this snowy night is doubled,
And I can draw no boundary
Between myself and you.
But who are we, where from,
If of all these years
There remains only gossip,
And we’re no longer here?
18
The Star of the Nativity
It was winter.
Wind was blowing from the steppe.
And the infant was cold there in the grotto
On the slope of the hill.
He was warmed by the breathing of the ox.
Domestic animals
Stood about in the cave,
And a warm mist floated above the manger.
Shaking bed straw from their sheepskin capes
And grains of millet,
Shepherds on the cliff
Stood looking sleepily into the midnight distance.
Far off there was a snowy field and graveyard,
Fences, tombstones,
A shaft stuck in a snowdrift,
And the sky over the cemetery, full of stars.
And alongside them, unknown till then,
More bashful than an oil lamp
In a watchman’s window,
A star glittered on the way to Bethlehem.
It blazed like a haystack, quite apart
From heaven and God,
Like the gleam of arson,
Like a burning farm, a fire on a threshing floor.
It raised itself up like a flaming rick
Of straw and hay amidst
The entire universe,
Which took alarm at the sight of this new star.
A reddish glow spread out above it
And had a meaning,
And three stargazers
Hastened to the call of the unprecedented light.
After them came camels bearing gifts.
And harnessed asses, one smaller than the other,
Moved down the hillside with little steps.
And in a strange vision of the time to be,
All that came later rose up in the distance,
All the thoughts of the ages, the dreams, the worlds,
All the future galleries and museums,
All pranks of fairies, all tricks of sorcerers,
All the Christmas trees on earth, all children’s dreams.
All the flicker of gleaming candles, all the paper chains,
All the magnificence of gaudy tinsel …
… All the more fiercely the wind blew from the steppe …
… All the apples, all the golden balls.
Part of the pond was hidden by the tops of the alders,
But part of it was perfectly visible from there,
Through the nests of jackdaws and the treetops.
The shepherds could make out very well
How the asses and camels went past the dam.
“Let’s go with them to worship the miracle,”
They said, wrapping their leather coats around them.
Scuffling through the snow made them hot.
Across the bright clearing, like sheets of mica,
The tracks of bare feet led behind the hovel.
At these tracks, as at the flame of a candle end,
The sheepdogs growled in the light of the star.
The frosty night was like a fairy tale.
And from the heaped-up snowdrifts, all the while,
Someone invisibly slipped into their ranks.
The dogs trudged on, looking warily around,
And pressed to the herdsboy, and expected trouble.
Down the same road, over the same country,
Several angels walked in the thick of the crowd.
Bodilessness made them invisible,
But their tread left the imprints of their feet.
By the stone a throng of people crowded.
Daybreak. Cedar trunks outlined themselves.
“And who are you?” asked Mary.
“We’re of the tribe of shepherds and heaven’s envoys.
We’ve come to offer up praises to you both.”
“You can’t all go in together. Wait by the door.”
In the predawn murk, as gray as ash,
Drivers and shepherd boys stamped about,
The men on foot cursed the men on horseback,
At the hollowed log of the water trough
Camels bellowed, asses kicked.
Daybreak. Dawn was sweeping the last stars
Like specks of dust from the heavenly vault.
And only the Magi of that countless rabble
Would Mary allow through the opening in the rock.
He slept, all radiant, in the oaken manger,
Like a moonbeam in the wooden hollow,
Instead of a sheepskin coat, he had for warmth
The ox’s nostrils and the ass’s lips.
They stood in shadow, like the twilight of a barn,
Whispering, barely able to find words.
Suddenly, in the darkness, someone’s hand
Moved one of the Magi slightly to the left
Of the manger. He turned: from the threshold, like a guest,
The star of the Nativity looked in at the maiden.
19
Dawn
You meant everything in my destiny.
Then came war, devastation,
And for a long, long time there was
No word of you, no trace.
And after many, many years
Your voice has stirred me up again.
All night I read your Testament,
As if I were reviving from a faint.
I want to go to people, into the crowd,
Into their morning animation.
I’m ready to smash everything to bits
And put everybody on their knees.
And I go running down the stairs,
As if I’m coming out for the first time
Onto these streets covered with snow
And these deserted sidewalks.
Everywhere waking up, lights, warmth,
They drink tea, hurry for the tram.
In the course of only a few minutes
The city’s altered beyond recognition.
In the gateway the blizzard weaves
A net of thickly falling flakes,
And in order to get somewhere on time,
They drop their breakfast and rush off.
I feel for them, for all of them,
As if I were inside their skin,
I myself melt as the snow melts,
&nbs
p; I myself knit my brows like morning.
With me are people without names,
Trees, children, stay-at-homes.
Over me they are all the victors,
And in that alone lies my victory.
20
Miracle
He was walking from Bethany to Jerusalem,
Already weighed down by sad presentiments.
The prickly brush on the steep hillside was scorched,
Over a nearby hut the smoke stood still,
The air was hot and the rushes motionless,
And the Dead Sea was an unmoving calm.
And in a bitterness that rivaled the bitterness of the sea,
He was going with a small throng of clouds
Down a dusty road to someone’s house,
Going to town, to a gathering of his disciples.
And he was so deep in his own thoughts
That the fields in their wanness smelled of wormwood.
All fell silent. He stood alone in the midst,
And the countryside lay flat, oblivious.
Everything mixed together: the heat and the desert,
And the lizards, and the springs and rivulets.
A fig tree rose up not far away
With no fruit on it, only leaves and branches.
Doctor Zhivago Page 65