The Winters are so short by Emily Dickinson

Лёт зим коротких льдист...
Навряд ли обелюсь,
что отослала прочь всех птиц,
что в кокон я стремлюсь

с улёгшимся едва...
А птицы - здесь, на чуть...
А там уж срок разбить шатры,
вновь дом свой распахнуть...

Вторженьям зим, обычно,
мне лето расхищать,-
зиме случиться раз пришлось -
всей тучности - стощать...

А там - настал потоп...
И смыл весь белый свет...
Хоть Арарат теперь лишь миф,
и в Ноя веры нет...




(Эмили - о краткости зим.
И Прист вдогонку, такой занудливый, как всегда...)
[David Preest:
Emily makes two points about Winters.
Firstly, looked at in one way, they are only
short interruptions. Scarcely has she moved
into the Pod of her house for winter when
the Phoebes or pewits have arrived (see poem 1690)
and it’s time to go into the garden again.
Secondly, she cheekily imagines that winters only
began when, in the days of Noah, a winter preceded
the ‘forty days and forty nights’ of rain that caused
the Deluge (Genesis 7:12). Then, even more cheekily,
she suggests that no one nowadays believes that there
was a man called Noah, whose ark was washed ashore
on Mt Ararat (Genesis 8:4).
By ‘no one’ Emily probably means herself and her
brother Austin, who often scandalised their mother
with their theological free-thinking. As Emily said
in a letter to Mrs Holland, ‘I don’t know what she
would think if she knew that Austin told me confidentially
“there was no such person as Elijah (L650).”
And in poem 597 Emily suggests that there
may have been no Moses either.]

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The Winters are so short by Emily Dickinson

The Winters are so short --               
I'm hardly justified               
In sending all the Birds away --          
And moving into Pod --               

Myself -- for scarcely settled --          
The Phebes have begun --               
And then -- it's time to strike my Tent -- 
And open House -- again --               

It's mostly, interruptions --            
My Summer -- is despoiled --             
Because there was a Winter -- once --    
And all the Cattle -- starved --         

And so there was a Deluge --             
And swept the World away --               
But Ararat's a Legend -- now --          
And no one credits Noah --