September 13th, 2014, 9:57 am
QuoteOriginally posted by: EBalIThe eastern tip of the Empire dives into night;cicadas fall silent over some empty lawn;on classic pediments inscriptions dim from the sightas a final cross darkens and then is gonelike the nearly empty bottle on the table.From the empty street's patrol car a refrainof Ray Charles's keyboard tinkles away like rain.Crawling to a vacant beach from the vast wetof ocean, a crab digs into sand laced with sea latherand sleeps. A giant clock on a brick towerrattles its scissors. The face is drenched with sweat.The streetlamps glisten in the stifling weather,formally spaced,like white shirt buttons open to the waist.It's stifling. The eye's guided by a blinking stoplightin its journey to the whiskey across the roomon the nightstand. The heart stops dead a moment, but its dull boomgoes on, and the blood, on pilgrimage gone forth,comes back to a crossroad. The body, like an upright,rolled up road map, lifts an eyebrow in the North.It's strange to think of surviving, but that's what happened.Dust settles on furnishing, and a car bends lengtharound corners in spite of Euclid. And the deepeneddarkness makes up for the absence of people, of voices,and so forth, and alters them, by its cunning and strength,not to deserters, to ones who have taken flight,but rather to those now disappeared from sight.It's stifling. And the thick leaves' rasping soundis enough all by itself to make you sweat.What seems to be a small dot in the darkcould only be one thing - a star. On the deserted groundof a basketball court a vagrant bird has setits fragile egg in the steel hoop's raveled net.There's a smell of mint now, and of mignonette.II.......XII...Sleep. The land beyond you is not round.It is merely long, with various dip and mound,its ups and downs. Far longer is the sea.At times, like a wrinkled forehead, it displaysa rolling wave. And longer still than theseis the strand of matching beads of countless days;and nights; and beyond these, the blindfold mist,angles in paradise, demons down in hell.And longer a hundredfold than all of this are the thoughts of life, the solitary thoughtof death. And ten times that, longer than all,the queer, vertiginous thought of Nothingness.But the eye can't see that far. In fact, it mustclose down its lid to catch a glimpse of things.Only this way - in sleep - can the eye adjustto proper vision. Whatever may be in store,for good or ill, in the dreams that such sleep bringsdepends on the sleeper. A cod stands at the door.Translated by Anthony Hecht.Russian.It must be particularly ironic to say about this poem, but it sounds crap in English.a