"Новые стансы к Августе"
(Иосиф Бродский)
IV
Well, may fell the shade of pointlessness
across my eyes, and may absorbed
my beard the damp, and skewed headdress,
that crowns this dusk, it turned
into the line a soul
can't cross-
I strive no more to leave
the neck, the visor, the buttonhole,
my boot, my sleeve.
Only my heart is pounding, it traced
that I was ripped someplace: the cold
is shaking it, hitting my chest.
V
In front of me the waters mutter,
the frost is pulled into the mouth's tear.
Can't say it otherwise: what could
it be, but not a face, the place where
a tear has occurred?
And my laugh stumbles
and worries the twilight causeway.
With gusts of rain the darkness crumbles.
And like a human my second guise,
it runs away from reddish eyes,
jumps up the billows
under the pines, under the willows,
blends with another ghost
the way I never can get lost.