Ах, как круто и тут же легко стало
сиротам наших вредных времен
сиротевших от себя самих
от рога к рогу и срочно прочь
восторгаться и лихо жить
алчным множеством потех
стирающих в забвение след
упоминаний как бы в склеп
давно опущенную слезу.
О как даже нам и седым уже
прозе новой не учиться тоже
в мельканиях скоротечных жар,
столь мелочных и мелких, если
сочинять ни с кем тот былой свет?
A Buddhist once said
mountains give birth
to lucid lakes and clear streams
so that they, the mountains, can
walk and glide across
both to one another and to
people in the vales below,
and that’s how even infinities meet
as all the women who won’t forget
that their beginning is the same
as that of a well that knows that too
since deep down she listens just as well.
Thus, mountains give birth
to lucid lakes and clear streams
and pout what is timeless
into cups of time—by which people pass
like beads of sounds
on the arrayed strings
in one merging consonance.
*****
And so, it struck me too
how strange, but how right and good,
that the name Buddha rings well
with hudba, the Czech word for music.
With a word said to defy flippant rhymes.
