Blind Milton[58] (1954–1962)
Portrait of the poet by Marc Chagall.
Ode to the Dove
I
Seldom, once in a childhood, dazzling in rainbow of colors,
An angel descends from the stars, his tune will be with you forever.
An angel appeared — and vanished on the other side of the world,
Over my chimney he left me a sign — a beautiful feather.
Not just an ordinary angel, how would one have thought of a boy?
A wonder! A dove is the feather in snowing magnet of dawn.
Newborn, hovers the dove, learning — it takes just a moment,
Till she glides down at the steps of his porch in silvery rings.
Soft finger nests of the boy keep her warm, stroke the down.
Her snowy plush comes alive, cooing with a sunny breath.
The boy will teach her to fly, to peck the mist like peas.
"You saved my life, dear boy," she nods her snow-white head,
"What gift shall I grant you, think fast: perhaps you would like
The mystery of my whiteness, an eternal snow, an amulet?"
Groggily, answers the boy: "My dearest, if you I inspire,
Come whenever I call you, in rain and in snow and in fire."
II
Sounds imprisoned in lips, like pearls in ocean castles,
Mute for thousands of years, and over the muteness — a knife.
"Sweet dove, child of my childhood, give voice to the lips, give voice,
Harken to weeping of sounds or else a dream will be drowned…"
Suddenly — a kiss on my lips. Who am I, where am I? The castles
Open up by themselves. The muteness — sliced by a knife.
Pearl and pearl and pearl, filled with mysterious sea rustlings,
Raining down from my lips, I am caught in a pearl terror.
…Crickets, like cobblers, hammer the grasses into my brow,
A meadow swims up in my attic and leaves a tear on my cheek.
Slaughtered roosters crow to honor one moment of mourning.
Melted snows pour ignited spirit in my ear.
Who intoxicated my fingers to write a verse like this:
All who ended their lives have sown in my heart their courage?
"Sweet dove, you gave me a mirror — a sheet of paper that sings,
My wandering words you took in, and spread over them your wings!"
III
Sheet of paper, you monument, the dove builds a nest in your body,
In you, not in marble, eternal is the face of the dreamer.
Here, between rough echoes, among sunken clay forms,
I gather silver syllables, to feed my childhood's dove.
Sunset sings in an oil lamp. And under the magic lantern
I build of bony sounds, coated with my blood — a temple.
He did not finish his word: rough and unhewn is the Word!
The volcano of poetry glows, sealed in bronze abysses.
Here, with my pen, I conduct my own silent orchestra:
Souls fly in with the rain, trickle down through my ceiling.
Cherries, immured in trees — I order them to change places:
They come on their purple feet to live as cherries in words.
Drawing by the poet.
A worm appears in the temple. He may not cherish such magic.
Real cherries in words scratch his palate like sand.
The dove coos like a sister: "Command the return of cherries:
You are the weight and the weigher, vanished visions inherit!"
IV
Girl dancer, my love, who are you? Were you born of a violin?
My throbbing garden body your dance has dug up with a spade.
Sick is the little dancer, somnambulent, in silver nightgown,
She swims away like a wave into cold, splashing worlds.
My head is filled with remedies to heal her heavenly figure —
Meanwhile a boy from the moon fell in love with my love.
Like Saul, I hurl at him spears — the boy hides among branches.
If I would bind him in poems — he gives me a silver finger.
Double windowpanes I order, to shelter my luck from men…
The panes are as whole as my love, and pure and double, but he
Swallows her out through the panes, lures with a beautiful gift:
Instead of dancing in the temple, she dances on the rim of the moon.
"Sweet dove, you tell the moon: it must not burn too hot,
Teach the dancer to fly, flying so high one must know!
I shall reward you with seeds, the rarest seeds and the best,
Let her not fall on thorns, if she must — let her fall on my breast."
V
To build and build the temple, with sunny thought to build it!
The devil comes in a fire, to set for my dove a temptation.
Gray is the sun in the sky. He spins gray mold on all colors,
The temple is burned out, its pillars flee like beasts.
Children like golden birds — he lays them out in skeletons,
Venom on lips of sounds, to poison the hearts of poets.
Faces are stuck on necks, like shadows of axes below.
Happy are all the dead when iron and flesh are brothers.
A mire, the earth and sky, and I am sunk to my neck.
Fire — and I in the dark. A stone with extinguished sparks.
Only the saved sheet of paper in my believing fingers,
The fires must kneel before it — here, they lose their dominion.
I know: my sheet is the dove who won't let my fingers freeze,
Words like grandchildren must remember the time of tyrants.
Days with no dove are moths. Hail to pure forms that I love!
I gather silver syllables to feed my childhood dove.
VI
"Yes, I am guilty, guilty, it was a sin to demand
That you bring back the dancer to me, to the earthly stalks.
An abysmal fire has devoured her young, unique blue,
Now my brow is searing with pearls in ash — with her gray."
"No, you're not guilty, not guilty, the dancer dances the same
Warm dance of your youth under smiling blue vaults.
You wander from land to land, cut off mother-earth from your navel,
Above you, the dance will help to hoist the world on a pitchfork."
"The dance above is a dream, where should I wander, my dove?
Eyes of the dead like nails all over my body, nailing
My soul to the Nothing. My bread and my salt — a ruin.
Under my steps is my homeland, moldy with grass is my country."
"I shall give you my wings to fly, pull out of the nails your body,
A white thought like a sail will swell up with a wind of freedom.
You are not indentured to death, the days will go around for a while,
Eternal is only the legend and it will appear with a smile."
VII
World. What is world? Just its tune — like a wave, like a woods, like a world.
Its celestial tune will wail in my veins and demand: prevail!
I extinguish the wailing with seas, unfamiliar cities greet me.
Stop! A rain of terzinas was played here by Master Dante.
"Master of Hell, would you like to exchange Hells with me for a moment?
I shall stroll easy in yours, and you — in the fires over there…
It will not diminish, master, your eternal, marble glory,
You are still Alighieri, your hell — still an allegory."
Men… Where are they, men?! How can we envy the dust?
Only the words of one bear their spirit, their faith.
Graveyards toll sounds — but unheard…For me they are a shelter.
Stop! Like a lion, Ha-Levi[59] sang my yearning from Spain.
Hey, you poets, without you, life is a fleeting dream,
Without poetry, life would have knelt before death like a camel.
Man and beast would have tortured themselves, alien and mute,
My faithful dove would not have accompanied me on her flute…
VIII
Oh dancer, tell me, where are you? My hair feels close your flutter…
The dove is unable to tell me: Where is your home, your stage?
A gazelle in sunny dew sometimes brings me your eyes,
Who is the garden tremor where bloom Chagallian blues?
Beyond the forest, in a rain, who inhales me, like a rainbow?
Who is the naked wave — no limbs and so supple, a bow!
Who is the snow avalanche, shining over rims of rock?
An eagle would kiss her breast, and she pours wreathes on his body.
Who is the mirror in tears? Who are the new faces?
Who is the woman in the coffin, the rose-covered funeral?
The wheels of the years, they turn, and devour and spin my shadow,
On this very day, a spade has covered itself in a grave.
Who is the white transformation, that cannot get out of a birch?
Who is the echo of silence and who is the silence in pink?
Will no one answer me now? Inside me, is madness in heat?
On this very day, the stones stoned themselves in the street!
IX
A stone meteor fell — far in the world, its tune
Drew me to travel through jungles, till once I saw it lying,
Full of the scents of stars. Nearby, on a boulder, a lion
Forged tolling bells with his roar, and a flame melted them all.
Who is the stone? I know it. Music under golden ribs.
The skychild calls me by name. Lips are drawn to lips.
"I am the dancer, don't ask … Hail to the lion's roar!
The king told me in advance your coming, your coming, your coming."
Limbs gel. Until my body, consumed in the flames of love,
Is altogether extinguished — "Oh, calm my lips, come close!
I shall leave you a sign: my last three drops of blood,
Before the moon becomes a tombstone white at my head.
I am the snow avalanche, the white birch, the mirror,
I am the echo of silence, encompassing you all around.
Gather the sounds, the images, in your region a hunger may swell …
Live them, enliven, describe!"
And thus did we say farewell.
X
Under a tree at the Red Sea. The waves will finish my ode.
Hush. In its shadow — a millstone, nimbly turned by the sun.
I inhale the white locust dunes — the guardians of time and memory.
Here my people wandered for forty biblical years.
Under the sand, miles of footsteps, vast as the desert their number.
Let the locust dunes reveal more profoundly my visions!
Where are my four decades — in the desert, along with those?
Bones remained, only bones — the grace of a blind hyena?
And the dove coos on my shoulder: "Good morning! And may I ask:
Years, are they really bones? A puff — and they play vis-a-vis.
Stalks with children's eyes are moving under the dunes,
Resurrection of stalks, and above — a cloud with violin strings!
"Dear dove, are you the same, your wings not gray, could it be?
Shall I build my temple here, as I built it day after day?
Shall I take my magic lantern, make it grow green, bloom blue?"
"To build and build the temple — with sunny thought, build it anew!"
1954
Else Lasker-Schüler[60]
Stooped over, the donkeys are weeping in Jerusalem.
No more the holy old woman, the singer Else.
No one will come to feed them with sparkling sugar
And help them bear the wounded stones of the Kastel,
The stones that fall with a groan from the hearts
Of all who come to this land — a treasure of stones! —
To build a home for the homeless King Messiah.
Once upon a time, a donkey rolled down from a mountain,
Lost his front tooth. The old woman then melted
Her wedding ring at Nissim the Goldsmith's in the Old City
And the donkey was given a gold tooth as a present.
And who understood like her the weeping of the Creator?
He finished creating! Eternity, for Him already eternal —
A chain on His neck, and there is no other …
On her Blue Piano,[61] in a hotel, she plays His remembrance,
When He was the master of chirping birds and lions,
Wrote with trees His fresh Paradise poem,
Kneaded a feminine rhyme from a masculine rib.
The ashen fingers, playing, are tranquilly dying.
She must not yet die! A young ant, deep in love,
Bitten till blood flows, strayed into her room —
And plays with the old woman on old keys of the piano.
She must not yet die! A sunflower fell in the garden —
A world fell! The seeds — gold-skinned men and women.
They will be sold in the market, their skins flayed …
She must free the slaves — the gold-skinned men and women.
She must not yet die! In the sea, waves are born.
They cannot speak. They demand with infantile hands!
The prayer for the baby waves must be sung to the end,
The storm must not swallow today their pink souls.
Where is the beginning of heaven? — in Jerusalem.
The old woman, now a star hovering over the buildings.
A Blue Piano, the city. A veiled bride.
I walk on the carpet of stone with Else,
Drunk on the Blue Piano and spliced by her dazzling sight.
Jerusalem, February 27, 1957
My Father
My father is a floe on rivers of Siberia,
My mother is a bonfire on Viliya's mire,
But both are inside me,
The floe and the bonfire.
My child, they will stay inside me,
Behind the eyelids of my eyes —
The bonfire and the floe of ice.
Hours
You remember when your hours
Were born one by one:
Every hour — another hue and fate.
Now you stand before the hours, stooped:
All the poisons mixed together
By a mad apothecary.
In a mortar, in the dark,
He mixes blindly and in haste:
Iron, pearls, herbs, narcotics,
All the There's and all the Here's,
In one potion that overpowers —
He lets you drink your hours.
The Saw
A man transformed himself into a saw.
Except for me, no one could see him breathe.
And people, when they crossed his jagged path,
Could feel in their own flesh his sawing teeth.
He sawed apart his time, his home, his world.
He sawed the marble sun, the rain, the stone.
And only words he could not saw apart.
And no one saw him, only I alone.
Smoke of Jewish Children
Only smoke, smoke, hovering smoke,
Dead children — puffs of living smoke.
They call: Mama, mama! from the smoke,
The whole panorama is in smoke.
The dolls and their worlds are smoke.
And over them the birds are smoke.
The dead children wrap themselves in smoke.
The dead children trap their play in smoke.
1957
Hail
I
So many pomegranates in your clouds!
Lightning splits them,
Hail falls.
My lips, Creator, savor your taste.
And you yourself went wandering
Through my soul, as the sun through a thick forest
Where no one walked before.
A bird is born in your own image,
Translates your silence
Into silent sounds.
II
All the trunks come together.
All the branches shut the windows.
You get lost in green flames,
In the thick forest, the most beautiful.
You get lost in a net of dew,
In the shadows when they run wild …
You get lost behind my vision,
And I shall show your way in images.
From Myself to Myself
How long is the road from myself to myself?
Sometimes half a moment,
That's all. Here is wholeness. But a serpent
On the path between the two gates.
And sometimes seven worlds, seven frosts long
Is the short walk from yourself to yourself.
Trained Animals
Words, words! Trained animals behind bars,
I release you. Flee back to the jungle, sweet slaves!
Anonymous new hymns — veins of silence,
I am drawn to their sex not-unsealed.
I shall find among desert rocks
That alphabet with no words, understood by
Locust and rain. What an enormous discovery:
The dead will answer and a stone will smile!
My poems will be read by metals, minerals,
Fires, devouring one another, turn to ash.
— Hey, Rimbaud, you sorcerer, splitter of vowels,
Tell me, boy: what's all the fuss about you?
The Road to Paradise
Of all the precious paintings in the Louvre
(Centuries match up a wall with a wall),
I am haunted by a skinless face of fate:
The cow with her flesh-split breast — by Rembrandt.
It seems:
The tremendous Dutchman gulped down
His gilded goblets of colors,
His secret wines,
And suddenly saw in his drunken skull
A gallows.
A hanging cow.
And here, his dream immortalized…
He put his dream on the butcherblock, skinned it —
To reveal the color of a cow's moo.
And prayed, and covered his canvas with wounds,
To bring into the Louvre paradise
The cow.
A Hundred-Year-Old Woman
Her body — clay. Freed of hate, of love.
Her crow's look, beyond all nay or yea.
Her body — clay. A formless blob
Covered with canvas, as in an atelier.
Facing her, the noisy swirl of
A carousel. The background flax is.
And like the carousel — the images in her,
But liberated from the groaning axis.
Take it easy… The carousel is outside
The old woman's bones. And years away:
A dream that no one will divine,
Free of hate, of love, of yea, of nay.
— A man will soon roll up his sleeves,
Pull the canvas off the clay
Which has no more a living hue,
Where all the creases blindly stray —
And masterly, re-knead the woman's body.
On the bench, a Venus will appear.
And he will leave her just two small
Fleshless silver earrings, as a souvenir.
Chosen Tree
When Stradivarius felt: he is about to carve
His last violin — on a stormy night, a gray old man,
He went off to the woods, stooped over with his stick.
Like burning violin bows, lightning attacked him.
He kneels at every tree, applies his breathing ear:
Oh, which chosen tree will now reveal
The one great tone? Which tree will give the wood
For Stradivarius to carve his last violin?
The smallest seed of sound — its pain
Weeps in him. The pain of raising
Violins. As if he himself had liberated from a prison
His own death
Along with the purest sounds.
He asks forgiveness of the shadows
For sawing off their heads — to capture
The nightingale inside his violin and to unravel
The grief of a tree after the first rain, a tree
That cannot flee assaulting saws …
With a cold iron glove, the storm fells him.
A cloud stands at his head with a spade.
And Stradivarius barely
Whispers: Chosen Tree,
Saw apart my body — the weeping form,
And carve from me, paint with my blood — the last violin.
Blind Milton
At forty-four
(My galloping age),
Perhaps at this very moment —
Milton went blind.
His words played
A trick on him:
Would he love blindly
A "tree," a "dog," a "rain"?
Half a body on the sofa,
Head down to the floor,
He lay
Drunk on his own blood.
He sought in blood the floating suns,
To ignite black marblewords
In a strophe.
Until the blind Milton
Solved the riddle:
In his blood he found
His lost paradise.
At forty-four
I am struck
By seeing. Like a geyser, gush in me
The bloods of a generation.
Drunk on my seeing,
I will always see it
In my veins, the blind generation.
Till I find my lost hell — —
The Red Foot
Daybreak. A hut in the steppe under lanterns of snow.
My father is sick. His soul wanders off
Naked in the snow. I see its footsteps.
Days, waiting for a doctor. Suddenly — a neighing,
Like redhot stones rolled in ice-cold water.
Mother, in hairy felt boots, opens the door,
Father — his leaden eyes. Bending over the porch,
A horse — a bonfire in his mouth, smoke in his nostrils —
And someone above him pulls on his reins and stops
The horse from galloping in to my father.
Soon a head appears in a snowcovered, outlandishly high
Sheepskin hat — you could use it as a dovecote —
And Yiddish words melt the fear on the windowpanes:
"I saw on the doorframe glimmers a mezuzah —
So I don't need to ask if Jews live here.
In short: on my heels, a gang of Kirghizes,
They want to take me alive. My name is Lipa.
And she … (He points to a blond creature, lovely,
Cuddled in the foamy milk of his open fur) —
She's my girl, my woman, her name is Nina.
Allow me to leave her with you. A good soul
And doesn't eat much. Like a bird: peck, peck.
See you, friends! Hey, and let our enemies choke!"
And before Mother puts two and two together —
The horse strikes up his oars in the snowy waves,
As if each of his legs were a separate pony,
And Lipa — a wolf, nails sunk in the flesh, on his saddle.
A sleigh, seven bell-bedecked northern dogs in the lead.
He finally came, the only doctor around.
At first he refused. It's war. The money's no money.
Till we promised to give him a pouch of salt —
And it helped. A dark softness in the house.
The beams drip gummy tar like honey.
Such an otherworldly creature will heal my father?
One eye running over — a rotten eggyolk…
The other eye, twitching, drowns in swampy tears.
His face — a beggar's moldy loaf of bread.
And no one understands his strange, one-syllable language …
With hasty, straw fingers he feels the dying man.
And out of his doctor's breast, as out of his heart, he pulls
A handful of leeches. He licks them to see if they're alive —
They are! (In my eyes, they are enchanted rings
Around his straw fingers …) The leeches alive —
But lifeless, outside the whole scene, is my father — — —
Barefoot, I lie close to him. His legs grow cold.
I am a heap of silence older. A silkworm
Spins with his innards white stretches of cloth.
And the Creator creates the melody of life:
Facing the misty body, that just now was
My own father, from behind a skinny sheet,
Where the girl was quartered, the abandoned Nina —
A concert erupts. A chirping that pierces the ceiling.
Amazing: not at the head of the dead is
Our only wax candle — now mama, candle in hand,
Is with the stranger behind the sheet.
The candle — a golden owl. The sheet — a tempest.
Mother and doctor — two sunset shadows in a storm.
Both draw out a dark little man,
Tied to the homey bed with a string.
Drunk on the shadow-potion, I run to the sheet.
On the border, my foot is flooded with the blood of the storm.
Barefoot, I flee outside, to blue-covered snows,
I sear them with fear-hieroglyphs, breathing and dazzling.
And to this very day, behind me, a red little foot pursues:
— This is how you are born, my boy, always and ever.
1958
A Winter Night[62]
Separated from all nights, between cloud and star,
A winter night blares out a wolf orchestra:
Violet nettles — the searing snows bruise.
With the face of a gallows, my hangman pursues.
Under snow — a minefield. As soon as I row over —
The forest of firs is my armor and my cover.
Wolves with torn-off paws. Howling hollows.
Without a mouth, alone, a human voice follows.
"My steps," I say, "if you don't know how soon
Under snow a mine lies — I'll draw you a tune.
Step in its traces, sign for sign, carefully stroll,
So they won't say: because of feet, he lost his soul …"
Up to the forest the tune polished its traces,
And in them — my dancing footstep races.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Under grass — a poemfield. To the same tune, I
Stroll among poems, for I know not where they lie.
A Pot from the Attic
A pot from the attic that sooted the sun in my childhood
Came back to me in the wire tangles of a dream.
Rusty voice of cracked cast iron,
He hurled spears:
— You see? No more attic, the cherry tree is gone.
No more dovecote, no ladder.
Just a pot from the attic — His Excellency Satan
Chained to you a concentrate of fear.
A fire spars with itself and is spent.
Art bursts like a light Parisian fashion.
But eternal is the fear — life's last element,
Except for fear, the rest is legend.
1961
Gather Me In
Gather me in from all the ends of time, from wood and stone,
Embrace me like letters of a burning prayerbook.
Gather me together — so I can be alone,
Alone with you, and you — in all my limbs.
Find me in a grave between the other world and here,
While weighing which of the worlds is better …
Find me as you avenge half a tear,
And when you see me cooling a hot knife in snow.
Remember, the cloud is sown through with my bones
And rains down with my lightning face.
Gather me together — so I can be alone,
Alone with you, and you — in all my limbs.
1961