Beltain

1.
The house where we used to live stood right above the gulf.
The wind would herd stones across the sandbank,
and the waves which rose so high on the horizon
would only reach the seashore a few days later.
And you, you would gaze at them every evening
before sleep, and that is why you were
so beautiful.

2.
Smell of petroleum, rust and thousands of people in the stifling twilight of the tanker. And muffled presence of the ocean. I waded among the wretched, peering into their faces – and saw the men who would caress gunpowder for years but had never dared to caress a woman, old folks eager to save the entire world from its madness but consumed with their own thoughts, and children speaking like wind as they had never heard another voices, and mothers singing the sweetest songs till they wheezed over empty cradles. Refugees from lonesomeness, they all hurried to you to love again.

3.
We’re dancing in an empty bar, me and my little waitress. You’re chuckling at me: is it a dance at all? Music is swaying around us, frozen in the middle of the hall.
– Right above the gulf, my dear, right above the gulf.
And I’m cuddling even closer to her, trying to make all of that seem true, but she doesn’t believe:
– You wouldn’t even buy an apartment by the gulf, not to mention a house.
She doesn’t believe that you exist.
All that is left is to turn the chairs upside down and switch off the lights.



Перевод: Отроковская Ратмира http://stihi.ru/avtor/ratmiraotro

Оригинал: Александр Ириарте http://stihi.ru/2015/05/01/8731