Просто дар
Роберт Фрост
Владели мы землею без любви.
Так продолжалось больше сотни лет,
Пока она признала нас. И были
Вирджиния и Массачусетс наши.
Но Англии сыны, лишь колонисты,
Владели тем, что не владело нами.
Владели тем, чем и теперь, не больше.
Но удержание лишало силы
Пока не обнаружили, что сами
Себя держали врозь с землей, где жили,
Нашли мы облегчение в признанье.
И приняли мы этот дар, как есть,
(Хоть дар не обошелся без войны)
Те земли, что сулил нам смутно запад
Безвестные, не тронуто-простые,
Не знавшие, чем предстояло стать.
переводчик
Вадим Беляков
The Gift Outright
By Robert Frost
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.