<p>432. SOFTEST OF TONGUES
<a l:href="#c_461"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>To many things I've said the word that cheatsthe lips and leaves them parted (thus:
prash-chaiwhich means «good-bye») — to furnished flats, to streets,to milk-white letters melting in the sky;to drab designs that habit seldom sees,to novels interrupted by the dinof tunnels, annotated by quick trees,abandoned with a squashed banana skin;to a dim waiter in a dimmer town,to cuts that healed and to a thumbless glove;also to things of lyrical renownperhaps more universal, such as love.Thus life has been an endless line of landreceding endlessly.... And so that's that,you say under your breath, and wave your hand,and then your handkerchief, and then your hat.To all these things I've said the fatal word,using a tongue I had so tuned and tamedthat — like some ancient sonneteer — I heardits echoes by posterity acclaimed.But now thou too must go; just here we part,softest of tongues, my true one, all my own....And I am left to grope for heart and artand start anew with clumsy tools of stone.<21 октября 1941>; Уэлсли, Macc.<p>433. EXILE
<a l:href="#c_462"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>He happens to be a French poet, that thin,book-carrying man with a bristly gray chin; you meet him wherever you goacross the bright campus, past ivy-clad walls.The wind which is driving him mad (this recalls a rather good line in Hugo),keeps making blue holes in the waterproof glossof college-bred poplars that rustle and toss their slippery shadows at piedyoung beauties, all legs, as they bicycle throughhis shoulder, his armpit, his heart, and the two big books that are hurting his side.Verlaine had been also a teacher. Somewherein England. And what about great Baudelaire, alone in his Belgian hell?This ivy resembles the eyes of the deaf.Come, leaf, name a country beginning with «f»; for instance, «forget» or «farewell».Thus dimly he muses and dreamily heedshis eavesdropping self as his body recedes, dissolving in sun-shattered shade.L'Envoi:Those poor chairs in the Bois, one of whichlegs up, stuck half-drowned in the slime of a ditch while others were grouped in a glade.<13 сентября> 1942<p>434. A POEM
<a l:href="#c_463"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>When he was small, when he would fall,on sand or carpet he would liequite flat and still until he knewwhat he would do: get up or cry.After the battle, flat and stillupon a hillside now he lies —but there is nothing to decide,for he can neither cry nor rise.11 ноября 1942; Сент Пол, Миннесота
