Deutsch and Yarmolinsky, comps. Modern Russian Poetry. 1921.
The Lady UnknownAlexander Blok (18801921)
O
A humid, wild and heavy air.
The Springtide spirit, brooding, pestilent,
Commands the drunken outcries there.
Where bored gray summerhouses lie,
The baker’s sign swings gold through dustiness,
And loud and shrill the children cry.
At every dusk and all the same:
Their derbies tilted back, the pretty wits
Are playing at the ancient game.
Soft screams and creaking oar-locks sound.
And in the sky, blasé, incurious,
The moon beholds the earthly round.
I watch the same procession pass;
In liquor, raw and yet mysterious,
One friend is mirrored in my glass.
And dreary waiters stick around.
“In vino veritas!” shout violent
And red-eyed fools in liquor drowned.
(Is it a dream no waking proves?)
As to a rendezvous inscrutable
A silken lady darkly moves.
And lonely by the window sits;
And from her robes, above the sunken ones,
A misty fainting perfume flits.
Of her ringed fingers, and her plumes,
Stir vaguely like dim incense vaporing,
Deep ancient faiths their mystery illumes.
To pierce the veil that darkling falls—
I see enchanted shores’ declivity,
And an enchanted distance calls.
A sun is given me to hold.
An acrid wine finds out the sinuosities
That in my soul were locked of old.
Of ostrich feathers waves once more;
And fathomless the azure glittering
Where two eyes blossom on the shore.
The key is safe and solely mine.
Ah, you are right, drunken impenitent!
I also know: truth lies in wine.