Теодор Хюбнер Рётке. Дальнее поле

Дальнее поле

I.
Вечно снится дальняя дорога:
то нетопырем лечу вузь тонненя,
то налегке колешу долгой косой–
заснеженный путь между сугробами,
крупа цокочет в лобовое стекло,
снова  мокрые хлопья
и ни огня в размытом зеркале,
за асфальтом щебень и
наконец безнадёжный песок,
авто уминает заносы,
пока не погаснут фары.

II.
В некошеном дальнем углу поля,
где провал дёрна к трубе–
обитель пересмешника, нора полёвки,
поодаль переменчивого цветника,
у ржавых труб и банок,
покрышек и металлолома
постижима вечность
в траченной дождём и жуками
 иссохшей морде крысы
среди лома старого угольного схрона
и убитого сторожем фазанника
дикого кота– потроха
по цветочной недоросли.

Я переживал по зарубленным косилкой
птенцам и крольчатам–
страдал умеренно.

В начале мая
думу о времени и смерти
вытесняли пеночки,
шебечущее по утрам:
беспокойное облако кроны вяза.
И я смотрел и всматривался,
глаза туманил птичьими силуэтами...
Кейп-Мэй*, еловый певун,.лазоревка...
Снующие, неуловимые что рыбы, бесстрашные,
повисшие тяжёлыми гроздьями,
что ранние плоды, замирая на миг
и привспархивая
легче зябликов,
пока крапивники препирались и пели
в зазеленевших изгородях,
а дятел барабанил в сухое дерево
над птичником.

..или лежать нагишом в песке
илистой отмели тихой реки
гудяя в раковину,
думая:
когда-то я был чем-то подобным, безмозглым,
или, возможно, с иным разумом,
не столь странным;
или провалиться по пояс в мшистую трясину;
или, выставя острые колени,
оседлать мокрое бревно,
веря:
вернусь змеёй или шумным птахом,
или, если повезёт, львом.

Так я научился не бояться бескрайности,
дальнего поля, ветреных скал вечности,
смерка времени на белом свете завтра
 в коловороте века,
раздольного тока волн,
набегающей воды.

перевод с английского Терджимана Кырымлы
* птичий заповедник в Нью-Джерси,.прим.перев.





The Far Field
I.
I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken.

II.
At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,
Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,
Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,
Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,
Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery, --
One learned of the eternal;
And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles
(I found in lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)
And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,
Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,
Blasted to death by the night watchman.

I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:
How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,
And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes, --
Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean, --
Moving, elusive as fish, fearless,
Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,
Still for a moment,
Then pitching away in half-flight,
Lighter than finches,
While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,
And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.

-- Or to lie naked in sand,
In the silted shallows of a slow river,
Fingering a shell,
Thinking:
Once I was something like this, mindless,
Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;
Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;
Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,
Believing:
I'll return again,
As a snake or a raucous bird,
Or, with luck, as a lion.

I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.


III.
The river turns on itself,
The tree retreats into its own shadow.
I feel a weightless change, a moving forward
As of water quickening before a narrowing channel
When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;
Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent
And the yellowish-green from the mountainy upland, --
At first a swift rippling between rocks,
Then a long running over flat stones
Before descending to the alluvial plane,
To the clay banks, and the wild grapes hanging from the elmtrees.
The slightly trembling water
Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;
And the crabs bask near the edge,
The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers, --
I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.


IV.
The lost self changes,
Turning toward the sea,
A sea-shape turning around, --
An old man with his feet before the fire,
In robes of green, in garments of adieu.
A man faced with his own immensity
Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.
The murmur of the absolute, the why
Of being born falls on his naked ears.
His spirit moves like monumental wind
That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.
He is the end of things, the final man.

All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree :
The pure serene of memory in one man, --
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.

Theodore Huebner Roethke
1908– 1963