Alexander Blok - Requital

Requital (excerpt)

No end in life’s unfolding space,
We live commensurate with chances,
We either face the gloomy sentence
Or feel the brilliance of Face.
But you, the artist, keep allegiance
To laws unshaken. Be resolved
To tell the scoria from gold.
You’re bestowed with impassive image
To measure all that you behold.
Your mind – let it be resolute
Erase the accidental visage –
And you will see: the world is good.
Now, view the light – the dark is lit,
Permit all things unhurried flow,
All which is sacred, which is low,
Through heat of soul, through cold of wit.

Thus Ziegfried tempers sword o’er furnace:
Now enters into red-hot ambers,
Now dips into the water deep –
And magic sword receives its firmness.
The forged blade is grace to Ziegfried;
A faithful Notung’s mighty blow –
And frightened Mime is kneeling low
Confused goes dwarf, a hypocrite !

Who forges sword? – The fearless knight,
While I am helpless in my rave,
As you, as all – just a clever slave,
Created from the dust and blight.
This world seems terrible to me …
The hero is deprived of stand –
His hand is in the peoples’ hand,
A conflagration broke the land.
And every heart, and mind, and thought –
Has its own despotism and law…
And thirsty dragon opens jaw
To gorge the Europe in glee.
Who shall defeat the dragon plight?
Don’t know: our side, obscure in sight,
As in the past, its future’s dim,
And smells of ashes in the night.

But tune forever stays, instead:
There’s always someone there to sing
Amid the crowd. Lo! His head
A beauty offers to a king.
There, on a scaffold, singer stands
And looks into the butcher’s eyes;
Here, for his poems and his stance
The crowd gets him crucified.
And I will sing… You won’t succeed
In stifling my inflamed creed.
Let church is empty and obscure,
Let pastor sleeps; before the mass,
I‘ll tread into a dewy pass,

And turn the rusty door-lock key
To sneak into eternity,
And in the scarlet dawn will serve
My own mass.

Thou breathed this dawn, now, bless my tales!
May I expose you some details
of secret life? Of what is thriving,
Of how the wrath consumes the striving,
How freedom and the youth are one,
How spirit reigns in everyone,
How father to his son imparts
The vows of the ancient past.
Some two-three links of generation
And carbon went a transformation;
Under a kick of stubborn strain
It turned into a precious grain.
So blow, without a restful sleep,
Let living vein is running deep,
The diamond glistens from afar –
My angry iambus, crush the stones!

1911
vip/2007

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