September, I-III
To Yury Nagibin
I
What's an awful weather outdoors? However,
Of no matter such an incident -
In january I'm living as in september,
Persistently and frenzily.
September, don't draw your wing,
Your wing of yellow-orange colour,
And, please, postpone your last will,
Your last day - give me linger, rather.
Wait me a little, don't sleep,
All enveloped by the will of grantor,
And, as in past times, waste your riches,
Indulge all growing trees with bounty.
What it had been! How the grass had strained
In order to turn green with such completeness,
And a tree, as a copper pipe, had played,
Had shined above the ground withered.
To all front gardens, overfilled to edge,
The nature spended, wasted its resource,
And dahlia displayed its inflorescence
And stood still, waiting for next growth.
The crowd of the startled painters
Was looking furtively on the colour scene,
And crowded, and wiped its sweat
From foreheads, cried of being innocent.
Cried of not being organizer of commotion,
And that those red colours were not shed all by it,
And as a proof, the crowd showed
Its poor palette then to everybody.
No, you are surely not guilty. All the same
The boughs will change colours in the autumn,
But all this - that of yellow or red,
Or green - let live forever, though.
How that made dirty, how eyes were hitted,
How the former colouration was broken!
And in this rapture - all the market did
The prices on the apples lower...
II
And we had met. You'd gone outdoors.
Everything had ended. Everything had started.
No any day was charged before
This day, as if before the Christmas party.
And we had seen each other. Coming in the doors.
And no any house was in there...
We had met, as the leaders old
With leaned back heads - together -
Fom pride, from knowledge - what is what -
From deep mistrust and inner tension.
By your forehead, by my forehead, as dot,
This dark motion had quickly flashed.
We met, as children in the morning,
With leaned back heads - of inner kindness,
Of readiness to be good, though,
Being timid with the words and shy so.
September, oh september, that's your guilt,
You operated so blindly, wrongly.
The freedom of indifference - you still
Is to be cursed, and blessed -and simulataneously.
Your client may be happy in the limits
Of your great fortresses, which were so solid built,
Invulnerable for the pain and love deep.
How vindictively they look at me.
And we had met. September was such generous
To hold its feasts abundant, unsuspiciously.
But by assess of importance of this play,
All people and all trees had shrinked back quickly.
III
My hands recovered their sight.
And eyes became, as hands, effective, greedy.
And then appeared voices in my larynx,
Dried up of thirst for the new sounds, real.
And this my core I'm understanding once in freedom.
You stand, and I'm standing -sounding, and opened for pain.
September added to our hair the orange tint, and teached us
To live, as he did, just exerting to last date.
(To be continued)
poem by Bella Akhmadulina, translated by Lyudmila Purgina
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