Мария Визи - A moon gate in my wall - собрание стихотворений

With someone's secret I am trusted,
a sun is given me to keep.
Throughout the fissures of my soul
the tangy wine begins to seep.

Those ostrich feathers, dimly drooping,
rock in my brain forever more.
Blue eyes, so deep they have no bottom,
now blossom on a distant shore.

Within my heart there lies a treasure,
and I possess the key, alone!
You speak the truth, oh drunken monster:
«In vino veritas» — I own.

Here I am resting, Filippo, artist forever immortal,
the wonderful charm of my paint brush is on everyone's lips
into the paints I was able to breathe with my fingers a soul,
souls of the pious I could shake with the voice of the Lord.
Even Nature herself, looking at what I created
had to admit that I was artisan equal to her.
Here in this marble I was rested by Lawrence
Medici, ere I would be turned into lowliest dust.

In ringing streams my poems go,
weep, laugh and sorrow, quickly bound
before you, on,
and every one
weaves living strings, as on they flow
and do not know their banks around.

But through the crystals running by
you are as ever far from me…
The crystals sing along and cry…
How can I make your traits, that I
may have you come to visit me
from where en chanted countries lie?

From nowhere, like a fountain blue
a light flashed on.
We turn our heads up, I and you,
and it is gone,

above the blackness yonder, throwing
a golden mop,
and here — one more, in spirals going,
a ball, a top,

green, yellow, red and blue again —
all night aglow…
And, having wakened it in vain,
they go.

Far from the highways stretching round
a small forgotten town is found.
Its park is fresh, its church is old,
its sleep starts early, one is told.

A fountain and a tree are there
right in the middle of the square,
where often do a pig and kid
graze till the setting sun is hid.

And when at times a motor car
comes through the swelter from afar,
raising the dust, and hurries on,
and, like a soul that's doomed, is gone, —

all watch with sorrow for a spell
the stranger rushing straight to hell.
And later pray, when all is still,
for peace for him whose soul is ill.

I used to know and have forgotten lists
of ancient names and numbers half erased.
This world — who leads it in the dusky mists,
that some are lowered and the others raised?

And why have people suffered through the days,
and blindly sought, in vain, a better share?
Did hidden hands direct them on their ways?
Or was it chance that tossed them here and there?

And if it was that someone wished to send
the sound of mortal agonies to stand,
when will it be that He will put an end
to all, rem oving the relentless hand?

Poems are songs of a soul in its flight —
listen to them, passerby, in the night.

Poems are sparks of a soul that s aflame,
catch them, for heaven and they are the same.

Poems are tears of a soul that's a-smart —
take them, extinguish the fire of your heart.

Poems are secrets a soul has in store, —
Know them, rise up to them, sin nevermore.

She doesn't talk, and she is calm once more,
but joy will not return to her again:
the day dam p earth was thrown into his grave
— that day joy took leave of her for good.

She doesn't talk — and now her very soul
is empty, like a shrine above a grave,
where day and night burns an eternal flame
lighted above the silent sepulchre.

In one of my familiar dreams
there is a place that is so strange,
a stillness, where the sunlight beams
upon a peaceful mountain range.

Green stands a peak, and others crowd
as far away as eye can see,
while in the sky a silver cloud
patterns its fragile filigree.

And there upon the slope I stand,
but shall I triumph or deplore
that in this meditative land
I do not need you any more?

We roam a waterless valley
— but are we asleep or awake?
The wind stirs the treetops above us
with its ragged hem in its wake.

Here once a stream was running,
but its source has long been dry.
Only the sting of the half-moon
and desert's fathomless sigh.

From grandfathers' fairytales
— there once was a source, we know.
But we can't recall, half-dreaming,
when? and where did it flow?

We are lost. We are searching for landmarks.
Our hearts in their last despair
are poorer than starving beggars
that stand in the city square.