<p>474. ORPHEUS
<a l:href="#c_507"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>Brightly lit from above I am sittingin my circular room; this is I —looking up at a sky made of stucco,at a sixty-watt sun in that sky.All around me, and also lit brightly,all around me my furniture stands,chair and table and bed — and I wondersitting there what to do with my hands.Frost-engendered white feathery palmtreeson the window-panes silently bloom;loud and quick clicks the watch in my pocketas I sit in my circular room.Oh, the leaden, the beggarly barenessof a life where no issue I see!Whom on earth could I tell how I pitymy own self and the things around me?And then clasping my knees I start slowlyto sway backwards and forwards, and soonI am speaking in verse, I am crooningto myself as I sway in a swoon.What a vague, what a passionate murmurlacking any intelligent plan;but a sound may be truer than reasonand a word may be stronger than man.And then melody, melody, melodyblends my accents and joins in their quest,and a delicate, delicate, delicatepointed blade seems to enter my breast.High above my own spirit I tower,high above mortal matter I grow:subterranean flames lick my ankles,past my brow the cool galaxies flow.With big eyes — as my singing grows wilder —with the eyes of a serpent maybe,I keep watching the helpless expressionof the poor things that listen to me.And the room and the furniture slowly,slowly start in a circle to sail,and a great heavy lyre is from nowherehanded me by a ghost through the gale.And the sixty-watt sun has now vanished,and away the false heavens are blown:on the smoothness of glossy black bouldersthis is Orpheus standing alone.<1941><p>ПЕРЕВОДЫ НА ФРАНЦУЗСКИЙ</p><p>Александр Пушкин</p><p>475. «Dans le d'esert du monde, immense et triste espace…»
<a l:href="#c_508"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>Dans le d'esert du monde, immense et triste espace,trois sources ont jailli myst'erieusement;celle de la jouvence, eau brillante et fugace,qui dans son cours press'e bouillonne 'eperdument;celle de Castalie, o`u chante la pens'ee.Mais la derni`ere source est l'eau d' oubli glac'ee…<Январь 1937>
