Читать книгу The Greatest Poems of Frank O'Hara - Frank O’Hara - Страница 15

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He set out and kept hunting

and hunting. Where, he thought

and thought, is the real chamois?

and can I kill it where it is?

He had brought with him only a dish

of pears. The autumn wind soared

above the trails where the drops

of the chamois led him further.

The leaves dropped around him

like pie-plates. The stars fell

one by one into his eyes and burnt

There is a geography which holds

its hands just so far from the breast

and pushes you away, crying so.

He went on to strange hills where

the stones were still warm from feet,

and then on and on. There were clouds

at his knees, his eyelashes

had grown thick from the colds,

as the fur of the bear does

in winter. Perhaps, he thought, I am

asleep, but he did not freeze to death.

There were little green needles

everywhere. And then manna fell.

He knew, above all, that he was now

approved, and his strenght increased.

He saw the world below him, brilliant

as a floor, and steaming with gold,

with distance. There were occasionally

rifts in the cloud where the face

of a woman appeared, frowning. He

had gone higher. He wore ermine.

He thought, why did I come? and then,

I have come to rule! The chamois came.

The chamois found him and they came

in droves to humiliate him. Alone,

in the clouds, he was humiliated.