Far
more than the rest of us,
women are drawn and quietly stirred
by the unruffled gaze of mirrors—
seeking, in that lucid calm,
news of
the self:
elusive shades, fleeting prints
of beauty and grace that ought,
surely, to be there—
if one
takes the pain
to look intently,
to take one’s best,
proper care.
Then
comes the immortal dilemma:
how much—or how little—
of inner beauty
must we carry
before we dare
put beauty on,
about us?
Z jabloňové zahrady
zůstalo jen jméno,
jméno jen a stín,
rozemnuté
v omámení do slabin,
hluboko, dočista,
a tak až za rozum –
a co tam uvidíš, poprvé
tě doopravdy udiví,
jak z jarních bělob jabloně
tolik hlubiny dokáže se úplně
v plody sladké zaoblit
oním neskonalým půvabem,
jenž se před polibek přiklání.
Those
well-wrought balconies
floating above our pedestrian heads
come as close as mortals may
to Bacchantes’ dulcimers and castanets—
should
the homes they daintily adorn
ever step into such an intended role.
Oh, are they not beds for chords—
frets on the gypsy guitar’s graceful neck,
carrying
sweet orange orbs and curves
from a solemn orchard’s perfumed hedge,
where the sunset moves to sink and stay,
wedging
deep into the silence of night,
when, in that purpled dark and flaming dance,
in lieu of a toast, they raise mending alabaster heels.
По снегу следы ступней
уносят тишину
в мягком очертании
как вздох из нежных губ.
В память без забвений,
когда та под словом
переобразилась в стих,
а в белизне вокруг
прикоснулись сон и свет,
a каждый взгляд
касаясь ее глаз
найдет, что дрожит изнутри,
как будто это был всего лишь
переодетый поцелуй –
a тот слёзный, снежный след –
в неё и мимо – уходящий алфавит.
Perfume:
a sin distilled
to be served
from flacons
and uncorked lips.
But doubt remains
among those who still
cagily bide their time
at Hell’s own threshold,
wondering whether
corruption remembers
if it came from above
or from below—
Why—does not Hell
still smell of Heaven,
and wonted perfumes
on arms,
necks, and earlobes
fly men wherever they will?
How many nights—
how many Heavens and Hells—
are folded into one
in those reedy, greedy,
fragrant flames?
Something of this, perhaps,
may yet be read
in a morning newspaper—
soon to perish, like so many,
by the glorious sundown dusk.
As though morning,
half-rain, half-thought,
made a pass on flesh
without disturbing it,
the verse moves—
a hush knowing its way.
Spine becomes fan,
fan becomes flame,
heart becomes script—
a page raised to the light
that both dwells and migrates,
threading what is felt
into what is becoming.
Assuming
that some doughty ancient hero
once managed to steal Cerberus,
the Gatekeeper of Hell,
and leave the Underworld
without its sentinel—
what, if such a theft were ever true,
would have happened then?
Would not Hell have lost
its confining shores and boundaries,
spilling over into our world—without end—
the living falling in, untimely,
without even the courtesy
of a visa stamp for the nether realm,
and the dead pouring outward,
with no one left to bar their escape?
And all—everyone, everything—
would be bemused and mixed again,
as in the Ionian fragments
of the world’s origins,
from that Dark Age before Socrates.
Or did someone strip Anubis
of his canine head?
Or was it that same reckless child
who made his mother lose her own
and set upon her neck
the head of a village cow?
Or was it a friend, a brother,
who dared such impious exchange?
And if Eros were in truth
the Lord of All Boundaries,
what of Heaven and what of Hell
would a headless Desire
wreak—or wreck—or remake?
And wasn’t this the unsaid point
still pondered by Mary Magdalene
in her cavern, darkened with vigil—
as she contemplates her skull,
a remnant surely not merely of a dead man
but of one decapitated—
a life severed at its limit?
And if today so much of humankind
longs for dogs and cats in their homes,
isn’t that—yet unbeknownst to us—
a rising pre-motion of premonition
that we may need to grow back
the heads of those long-lost guardians
of the deep and the dead,
those who can tell and scent
what evil is and how it smells,
even when unseen?
