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: “Farwell, azure of Transfiguration, Farwell, the Second Savior’s gold. Ease with a woman’s last caress The bitterness of my fatal hour. “Farwell, years fallen out of time! Farwell, woman: to an abyss Of humiliations you threw down The challenge! I am your battlefield. “Farwell, 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.” 1946-1953 Tr. from Russian by Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky Pantheon Books 2010 |