Читать книгу PARADISE - Alasdair Gray - Страница 6

1: The First Ascent

1 God’s glory moves and shows the universe

shining in some parts more, in others less.

I entered Heaven with joy too great for speech

4 to glorify his light. I can recall

only dim shadows of it now

within this song. All you nine muses

7 led by Virgil helped me evoke the steep

descent to Hell and climb to reach this height.

Sun-king Apollo too inspired their aid!

10 I beg you, please give me such strength again,

turn me into a perfect voice to sing

of Heaven’s grandest things and crown myself

13 with laurels, the one headgear fit for use

by a true poet or great conqueror.

Their fewness demonstrates in human kind

16 a shameful lack of will. If I succeed,

like spark from which flames leap, some after me

may be inspired to write with greater skill.

19 The sunrise greets us most days of the year

from several degrees to north or south.

When solar orbit touches other rings

(equators earthly and celestial, 22

ecliptic and the equinoctial)

four circles make three crosses and so bring

more harmony, and Summer can begin. 25

The sun this morning rose at that good point.

When Beatrice looked up at height of noon

no eagle ever fixed upon the sun 28

a gaze as clear, and since reflected rays

rebound to source like pilgrims going home,

twin beams of light now linked her sight and sun. 31

I copied her. Eden was made for ease

of humankind. There it was possible

for me to see what here would make me blind. 34

Gazing into the solar blaze I saw,

like molten silver splashed from crucible,

such fountains of tremendous light I thought 37

that He Who Can had made an extra sun.

I saw too Beatrice now looked upon

the high, eternal, starry, singing wheels 40

so lowering my eyes to rest on hers

I heard them too. Eating a magic herb

changed Glaucus to an ancient Greek sea-god. 43

The love-light in the face of Beatrice

transhumaned me in ways I cannot say.

Of new sensations knowledge cannot speak 46

unless it learns new words. Did God lift up

my eager mind to his eternal sphere?

49 No rain or river filled so vast a lake

as this whole sky now kindled into flame.

The brilliance of its harmony and light

52 provoked an appetite to know the cause,

so she who understood me perfectly

smiling replied before I questioned her,

55 “Dullard, do you not see you’ve left the earth?

Lightning never flashed faster from a cloud

than we ascend to your right place and mine.”

58 Her smile and words erased perplexities

before I found one more. “But why,” said I,

“does solid me rise above lighter things?”

61 Like mother soothing sickly child she said,

“Order is God’s first law. All that He made

have places in eternal excellence, for which

64 in minerals, plants, animals they strive

instinctively, in people willingly.

When ill will leads astray our souls can’t rest

67 until we reach our given place and are

at last in harmony with all that’s best.

We are now soaring to our origin

70 as naturally as a waterfall

pours down a cliff. Those who forget their place

by choosing base delight, are very like

73 materials no artist can use well,

discarded in the midden heaps of Hell.

Climbing them there has purified you, so

guilt cannot weight you. That is why you rise. 76

Innocent souls who stay below defy

nature and reason, like a static flame.”

Pausing, she turned her eyes toward the sky. 79