<p>451. THE TRIPLE DREAM
<a l:href="#c_481"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>I dreamt that with a bullet in my sidein a hot gorge of Daghestan I lay.Deep was the wound and steaming, and the tideof my life-blood ebbed drop by drop away.Alone I lay amid a silent mazeof desert sand and bare cliffs rising steep,their tawny summits burning in the blazethat burned me too; but lifeless was my sleep.And in a dream I saw the candle-flameof a gay supper in the land I knew;young women crowned with flowers.... And my nameon their light lips hither and thither flew.But one of them sat pensively apart,not joining in the light-lipped gossiping,and there alone, God knows what made her heart,her young heart dream of such a hidden thing....For in her dream she saw a gorge, somewherein Daghestan, and knew the man who laythere on the sand, the dead man, unawareof steaming wound and blood ebbing away.<Ноябрь 1941><p>452. THE ANGEL
<a l:href="#c_482"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>An angel was crossing the pale vault of night, and his song was as soft as his flight,and the moon and the stars and the clouds in a throng stood enthralled by this holy song.He sang of the bliss of the innocent shades in the depths of celestial glades;he sang of the Sovereign Being, and free of guile was his eulogy.He carried a soul in his arms, a young life to the world of sorrow and strife,and the young soul retained the throb of that song — without words, but vivid and strong.And tied to this planet long did it pine full of yearnings dimly divine,and our dull little ditties could never replace songs belonging to infinite space.<Весна 1946><p>453. THE SAIL
<a l:href="#c_483"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>Amid the blue haze of the oceana sail is passing, white and frail.What do you seek in a far country?What have you left at home, lone sail?The billows play, the breezes whistle,and rhythmically creaks the mast.Alas, you seek no happy future,nor do you flee a happy past.Below the mirrored azure brightens,above the golden rays increase —but you, wild rover, pray for tempests,as if in tempests there were peace.<Весна 1946><p>454. THE ROCK
<a l:href="#c_484"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>The little golden cloud that spent the nightupon the breast of yon great rock, next dayrose early and in haste pursued its wayeager to gambol in the azure light.A humid trace, however, did remainwithin a wrinkle of the rock. Aloneand wrapt in thought, the old gentle stonesheds silent tears above the empty plain.<Весна 1946>
