Either the Way of the Dao or the Way of the Dung

 

“So who, I ask you, would want

to seek out and leaf through so many

volumes and then extract so little?”

Boccaccio, Pagan Gods, Preface I

 

Many extract little

by extracting much

of what love may say

from behind the cover,

 

leafing and loafing

through a book of life

and forgetting

that neither in this

 

nor in music, in that

geometry of the sound,

nothing that is is random,

not even errors or kismet.

 

But no one can see

or attain the elixir,

destiny’s belle letters,

who, enslaved, spends

 

one’s life in putting down

and away the soul and ever

trying to kill the God inside

so that the good is vain

 

and so is love and life

and what is left—whether

little or much becomes

a Hell or many Hells of lies

 

where the Muck of the Ugly reigns

just as, in the East, they found

the Dao—while the rest keep

drowning in the chosen dung.

Nation’s Greatness—Measure of Its Honor

 

Brains often welter in the dark

and so they don’t tell us much

unlike honor true and simple

how great the people are.

 

Brains can be lent or leased

if there’s the will plus capital,

and though honor can be lost

or dissed, it doesn’t grow outside.

 

From birth, honor hides inside

but can’t be brought to life

and nowhere is found

if one isn’t up to honor’s mark.

 

Horrible and awful is the nation

whom honor has been denied;

it will do everything that’s vile,

with any excuse for the reason.

 

Honor can’t be learned from books,

and it is no one’s docile slave.

And where on honesty “honor” is low,

that nation’s worth is vain and void.

Čest je mírou velikosti národa

 

Rozum často tápe v tmách

a lehce zradí vás jak čas,

ale čest má v sobě vlastní jas,

a v ní národ svoji sílu má.

Rozum snadno bývá k mání

v archívech završených dob,

o ctnosti však málokdo co píše

a mnohý nad ní ohrne svůj nos.

Vždyť čest je stará neposlucha.

buď je doma zabydlená u člověka,

kde ji dávno Bůh dal k vínku,

anebo s cizím ztratila se v pýru,

a z národa, co zaprodal svou čest,

vzniká lítá stvůra, a žádné zlo

není jim zlem ani příliš ani dost,

a čest takovým Bůh sám odpírá.

V knihách rozumů jsou mraky,

kam však ctnost vypadla jim z řádky?

Jenomže kde chybí v jádře pravdivost,

tam i národ stojí jen za falešný groš.

 

Федор Витальевич Матишев

В ЧЕСТИ ВЕЛИЧИЕ НАРОДА

 

Величие народа не в уме.

Изменчив он, словно погода.

Барахтается часто ум во тьме.

В чести величие народа.

Ум могут все приобрести

Из кладовых истории и быта,

Честь в чистом поле не найти,

Она частенько проклята и бита.

С рожденья в генах скрыта честь,

Её нельзя призвать к ответу.

У человека она есть,

Или же вовсе её нету.

Ужасно страшен тот народ,

Не награждённый честью богом,

На подлость всякую пойдёт,

Не погнушается подлогом.

Как ум, честь в книгах не найти,

Она не может быть в угоду.

И если честность не в чести,

То грош цена тому народу.

Of the Day when I Met in Prague The Specter of the Havelesque, New And Manifest Little Faustian Eros

 

Something, even much,

was already in the air

when 1989 loomed,

but it must have been

still some earlier Spring

 

when a friend of mine

took me for a stroll

through Prague along

the Pathway of the Kings

behind the Horologe

 

and there to a passage,

narrow, dark—others

would easily overlook—

with a little side door

to a Gothic cellar bellow,

 

serving as a dingy boat

for a Bohemian bar

plunged then into haze

puffed by smoking guests

and junkies with an aptitude

 

for alchemy and magic art.

And there this quite well-known,

but married Don Juan of Prague,

immediately picked on a pair

of black-clad nymphs

 

who had seen and done

quite much both on that day

and by their lifetime years’

modest combined count.

And so simply and so fast

 

he told them to go with us

to a flat one of his friend

occupied in that quarter

of the labyrinthine town.

And, lo, it turned out

 

the two lassies were

fair game and up for fun,

when, already outside

on the street, the stouter one

declared what beat my wits:

 

“We are here to meet and fill

demand and municipal needs.”

And I confess—this and my

friend’s amiable and free spirit

troubled my green innocence.

 

Once we made it to the flat,

there was already a symposium,

a banquet of young hipsters

on its way, discussing

some question of the day

 

that tried to catch the spirit

of the coming age, so well

embodied in those Gothic gals

bagged from the nether cell

by my merry, good old friend.

 

But as the time was getting late,

something happened in between

my slowly hatching daimon

whose job is to hold my straps

and me being a clueless outcast,

 

so I pulled in my horns and left

without waiting for the final act

of which, though, the next day

my friend gave me a rough sketch:

they all shared, and I was missed.