"Osip Mandelstam. Tristia (tranlsation by Ilya Shambat) (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

And in elastic darkness of the chariot
Where sadness, hypocrite, hid her face,
Wordless and tearless, lost for hellos
A vase of autumn roses interlaced.

Foreigners followed in a black procession
And tear-drenched dames were walking in their stead
Blushed cheeks under a brooch, and with direction
The horseman ruled above them: Straight ahead!

Whoever you have been, deceased Lutheran,
Lightly they buried you and lightly sang.
The eye was fogged as by a decent tear
And with reserve above you church bells rang.

And then I thought: I need not proselytyze.
We are not prophets, not preachers if I may,
We don't like heaven, hell we do not fear,
We shine like candles in the middle of the day.



x x x


1.
Hagia Sofia -- here has stopped and stared
The Lord the Judge of people and the tsars!
Your dome, as an eyewitness once described it,
As if by chains is hanging from the stars.


2.
To all a shining light -- age of Justinian,
When to steal off for foreign gods unseen
Dedicated Diana the Ephesian
These seven hundred marble columns green.


3.
To what aspired your generous creator,
When high in spirit and in reason both,
He laid his instruments upon the ground
And pointed them directions east and north?


4.
The temple shines, in the world's aura bathing,
And forty windows -- triumph of the light;
On sails under the dome the four archangels