Б. Ахмадулина Сумерки B. Akhmadulina Twilight

In any twilight, there's a blissful freedom
From clear numbers of the era, year, day.
When? - It doesn't matter. Here's the entrance into
The deep park and the distant fire flash's ray.

Either in moisture, which soaked flowers to bloom,
or in the trees that with the love are filled,
of this very century, — there is no proof.
So, choose some other for yourself, — and live.

I'm brought to the alleys with the ancient fame.
by error of spirit, mistake of sight,
I walk along them. An oncoming old dame,
as if recognized, views me from the side.
This place is quite deserted during the day.
but at twilight, my eyes are free to see
a house with a happy family to say,
they love each other impetuously,

where the guests are waited for each birthday feast —
to make noise, blush, kiss hands, and all the rest,
where I was invited, by the hand at least,
where I will never be a real guest.

If their careless voices are given to be
the silence of the sky and the water, —
whose fingers babble on the piano keys, —
Whose lace twists into a grief of mortals,

How I've got the mercy of their welcome then,
that slow waltz, started by people to dance
the oldest waltz, that is the oldest omen
of sadness and love of somebody else.

For mind and for hearing is to play a game,
where a river acts, so probably fit,
then, an empty field, a tree, and an old dame,
a some village and three blind lights in it.

A vague smile of my soul is wandering there,
in unconsciousness state, far away, and
in that homeland, whose so strange and odd error
will give me foreignness of speech and land.

The mind, frightened by the darkness, sobers up
and prowls, and again it wants to know that
there is a clear picture of the living stuff
of my age, my hour, my table, my bed.

I'm still lost in a dewy pool, I hear how
in a wild language the transistor is
sending its curses towards me, being now
completely clenched in the unyielding fist.

28-29 May, 2024

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На фото: Белла Ахмадулина Автор фото: Анастасия Федоренко Источник: Википедия