He who compares himself to the eye of a horse,
Peers, looks, sees, recognizes,
And instantly puddles shine, ice
Pines away, like a melting of diamonds.
Backyards drowse in lilac haze. Branch-
Line platforms, logs, clouds, leaves . . .
The engine's whistle, watermelon's crunch,
A timid hand in a fragrant kid glove. He's
Ringing, thundering, grinding, up to his breast,
In breakers . . . and suddenly is quiet . . . This means
He is tiptoeing over pine needles, fearful lest
He should startle space awake from its light sleep.
It means he counts the grains in the empty ears,
And it means he has come back
From another funeral, back to Darya's
Gorge, the tombstones, cursed and black.
And burns again, the Moscow medium,
In the distance death's sleigh-bell rings . . .
Who has got lost two steps from home,
Where the stone is waist-deep, an end to everything?
Because he compared smoke to Laocoon,
Made songs out of graveyard thistles,
Because he filled the world with a sound no-one
Has heard before, in a new space of mirrored
Verses, he has been rewarded with a form
Of eternal childhood, with the stars' vigilant love,
The whole earth has been passed down to him,
And he has shared it with everyone.
19 January 1936
This, not graveyard roses, is my gift;
And I won't burn sticks of incense:
You died as unflinchingly as you lived,
With magnificent defiance.
Drank wine, and joked -- were still the wittiest,
Choked on the stifling air.
You yourself let in the terrible guest
And stayed alone with her.
Now you're no more. And at your funeral feast
We can expect no comment from the mutes
On your high, stricken life. One voice at least
Must break the silence, like a flute.
O, who would have believed that I who have been
tossed
On a slow fire to smoulder, I, the buried days'
Orphan and weeping mother, I who have lost
Everything, and forgotten everyone, half-crazed --
Would be recalling one so full of energy
And will, and touched by that creative flame,
Who only yesterday, it seems, chatted to me,
Hiding the illness crucifying him.
House on the Fontanka, 1940
His portraits change.
His eyes look at you
Differently and his lips smile
A different smile. I noticed this
Returning from a poet's funeral.
Since then I have seen it verified
Often and my theory is true.
1940
I came to him as a guest.
Precisely at noon. Sunday.
In the large room there was quiet,
And beyond the window, frost.
And a sun like raspberry
Over bluish-gray smoke-tangles.
How reticent the master
Concentrates as he looks!
His eyes are of the kind that
Nobody can forget. I'd
Better look out, better
Not look at them at all.
But I remember our talk,
Smoky noon of a Sunday,
In the poet's high gray house
By the sea-gates of the Neva.
1914, January
