Стихи

The Albatross

Often, to amuse themselves, the men of a crew

Catch albatrosses, those vast sea birds

That indolently follow a ship

As it glides over the deep, briny sea.

Scarcely have they placed them on the deck

Than these kings of the sky, clumsy, ashamed,

Pathetically let their great white wings

Drag beside them like oars.

That winged voyager, how weak and gauche he is,

So beautiful before, now comic and ugly!

One man worries his beak with a stubby clay pipe;

Another limps, mimics the cripple who once flew!

The poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky

Who frequents the tempest and laughs at the bowman;

When exiled on the earth, the butt of hoots and jeers,

His giant wings prevent him from walking.

— Translated by William Aggeler

The Joyful Corpse

In a rich, heavy soil, infested with snails,

I wish to dig my own grave, wide and deep,

Where I can at leisure stretch out my old bones

And sleep in oblivion like a shark in the wave.

I have a hatred for testaments and for tombs;

Rather than implore a tear of the world,

I'd sooner, while alive, invite the crows

To drain the blood from my filthy carcass.

O worms! black companions with neither eyes nor ears,

See a dead man, joyous and free, approaching you;

Wanton philosophers, children of putrescence,

Go through my ruin then, without remorse,

And tell me if there still remains any torture

For this old soulless body, dead among the dead!

— Translated by William Aggeler

A Carcass

My love, do you recall the object which we saw,

That fair, sweet, summer morn!

At a turn in the path a foul carcass

On a gravel strewn bed,

Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,

Burning and dripping with poisons,

Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way

Its belly, swollen with gases.

The sun shone down upon that putrescence,

As if to roast it to a turn,

And to give back a hundredfold to great Nature

The elements she had combined;

And the sky was watching that superb cadaver

Blossom like a flower.

So frightful was the stench that you believed

You'd faint away upon the grass.

The blow-flies were buzzing round that putrid belly,

From which came forth black battalions

Of maggots, which oozed out like a heavy liquid

All along those living tatters.

All this was descending and rising like a wave,