Читать книгу "Not I, but the Wind..." - Frieda von Richthofen Lawrence - Страница 31

MEETING AMONG THE MOUNTAINS

The little pansies by the road have turned

Away their purple faces and their gold;

And evening has taken all the bees from the wild thyme

And all the scent is shed away by the cold.

Against the hard pale-blue evening sky

The mountains’ new-dropped summer snow is clear

Glistening in steadfast stillness—clear

Like clean pain sending on us a chill down here.

Christ on the cross, his beautiful young man’s body

Has fallen forward on the nails, and hangs

White and loose at last, with all his pain

Drawn on his mouth, eyes broken in the final pangs.

And slowly down the mountain road, a belated

Bullock waggon comes: Lo I am ashamed

To gaze any more at the Christ, whom the mountain snows

Whitely confront, my heart shrinks back, inflamed.

The breath of the bullock steams on the hard chill air;

The band across its brow, it scarcely seems

To draw the load, so slow and dull it moves

While the driver sits on the left-hand shaft and dreams.

Surely among your sunbrowned hand, some face, something

That vexes me with memory! He sits so still

Here among all this silence, crouching forward

Dreaming and letting the bullock take its will.

I stand aside on the grass to let them go,

And, Christ, again have I met his eyes, again

The brown eyes black with misery and hate, that look

Full into mine, and the torment starts again.

One moment the hate leaps at me standing there,

One moment I see the stillness of agony

Something frozen in silence, that dare not be

Loosed; one moment the darkness frightens me.

Then among the averted pansies, below the high

White peaks of snow, at the foot of the sunken Christ,

I stood in a chill of anguish, trying to say

The joy I bought was not too highly priced.

But he was gone, motionless, hating me,

Enduring as the mountains do, because they are strong

But a pale dead Christ on the crucifix of his heart

And breathing the frozen memory of his wrong.

Still in his nostrils the frozen breath of despair,

And in his heart the half-numbed agony;

In his clenched fist the shame and in

His belly the smouldering hate of me.

And I, as I stand in the cold averted flowers,

Feel the shame that clenches his fists like nails through my own,

Feel the despair on his brow like a crown of thorns

And his frozen anguish turning my heart to stone.

Tuxtal