Читать книгу Time and love. The novel in verse - George Pospelow - Страница 16

The southern point

of the Indian peninsula.

The two in love —

together.

They had traveled for months

separating for studies

at different cities —

strolled along the sandbank

of the ocean.

On their left,

the jungle of stunted

palms, banana, and bushes

stretched.

To be together.

Their only desire.

They were.

No limits to a bright space!

Freedom from subordination!

What made suspicious

was the enormous Sun,

so close,

within a stone’s throw.

Well, the equator was nearby —

that might be the reason.

By three, the Sun

swelled and melted,

painted the sky in every

likely tint of red,

dark burgundy dominated.

The horizon faded.

Then a colorful magma

erupted into the ocean,

and along with its mirror

quickly reached the shore,

transforming everything around

into incredibility.

The gulls escaped.

No movement, noise, or wind.

A majestic fight of royal

colors – burgundy and golden!

The first won

all the sky expanses,

only a “burning” jungle

did not submit.

Then it – carmine —

was losing material forms.

It grew darker. The pulse

of the Galaxy’s solar engine

pierced the illusory world.

Beyond the typical understanding,

this extraordinary phenomenon

penetrated the lovers’ brains and bodies

of the lovers, rapt, scared.

A solar eclipse, a flare?

Something else.

A storm?

It was not the Pole.

Notions about cosmogony,

occultism became confused.

The surrealist depiction of the Sun

seemed to be

an apprentice’s draw from Nature.

The vision was head and shoulders

above virtuoso Hoffman.

Primitivism could have explained

whether these two

were at the Creation

or the Apocalypse.

Nearby was his Beatrice,

but no Virgil

who could interpret

where they were.

A place of Hell, or

a paradise of fiery wizardry?

Either they were pushed

at a forge,

where the sky smith

would flatten them

into new stars

for his tailcoat,

or they were already

on blood-red Mars:

unearthly landscapes were

where the glance went.

Gradually fears disappeared:

not at the end of light,

but at the change of light.

The two in love looked

at recently bought

golden rings,

admired.

A long kiss returned them

to the Earth.

Youngblood bubbled.

Clothes – down.

The girl allowed him to caress her.

Engaged, they agreed

not to copulate before the marriage.

Soon, very soon.

Still, to understand how

the agreement could survive,

well, read “Kama sutra.”

There, a bride and a bridegroom

find comfort,

variations and variations of sex,

unknown to many couples.

Such was

the chosen version of love.

This resilient body!

Perfect lines and shapes,

each the Indo-European

ideal of beauty!

Then in a moment,

the two decided

to break their agreement,

and pronounced

a scarlet-hot desire,

at that moment —

for the first and the last time —

they hear a rolling rumble.

A warning blood smudge

of a sacrificed fantastic animal

appeared in the sky

as if the Sun wished

to communicate with the lovers,

“The outcome will kill your love,

proud, wondrous, all-time.

Don’t impoverish yourselves.

A wedding will reward

your love forever.

Just outwait it.”

The two understood the omen,

ran, quenched the fire of lust

in the amaranthine ocean.

The bridegroom plunged under the bride.

An hourglass waist.

The hips filled

in the Sun frame.

He kissed the V-shaped spot

on his nearest Sun,

weighed her down after him,

then saved

only to be drawn again in her arms.

She, Redskin, liked it,

intercepted the amorous initiative

and attacked,

until the Redman

took her in his arms

and carried her ashore.

Hours elapsed

in their embrace and conversation,

before night came.

Feeling the Shiner wanted

to finish its explicit story,

to face the truth out,

and to lengthen the light,

they found rough timber in the forest,

and made a grotesquely high bonfire.

Like an icon-lamp,

it served as a liaison

between them and the world

beyond their conception.

Earth, water, air,

and fire —

all four elements

gathered on the shore

besides the Sun – inactive

when inside the logs,

then calescent in half a sky.

It’s dancing protuberances

evoked a fantasy flow —

snatchy flame visions.

Appeared

a Zoroastrian fire-handler

seen in Gujarat.

Nietzsche came up to him.

They talked, disappeared.

A widow has seen in Bihar

allowed to cremate her alive.

Her dead husband

in glary white clothes

met her, embraced, took off.

Historical recollections

and the Nature

crossed over

in vaulting groggy ecstasy,

animating zestfully

thousands of Bengali lights

and fireflies at night in Bengal.

Mixed them

with a pyrotechnical nonesuch

of the XVIII-century France,

and it seemed,

the French outshot the fireflies.

The symbols of fire

in cultic buildings

of all world religions

existing in India

in ancient or modern types

streaked.

Skryabin,

composing “The Symphony of Fire,”

was angry with the interference

of flamingly hopping hetaerae.

In a fire, inquisitors burned

Salem and Holland “witches,”

not burning away.7

A dragon discontinued

his fire exhalation,

closed to an African she-elephant,

got her reciprocity.

A fire-girl tempted

ineffectively the Buddha.

Finally, the flame subsided,

stopped joking with the lovers.

They – shocked, silent —

plodded to the water to cheer up,

and noticed

how the Moon had illuminated

the landscape

recognizable in the natural light.

A yesterday

Sun orchestra of color-music

gave place

to a silver homophony

of the Full Moon’s saxophone.

After coming back,

the two warmed up by the fire,

made a small raft.

A little monkey tried

to hit them with coconuts.

Enticed for some time with bananas,

it ran up to the hot coals —

and not ready for a fire walking —

returned, beaten, to the forest.

The raft was on the water.

The bride who imbibed

the temper and vigor of the fire

posed as a hetaera

from a Khajuraho temple,

the most erotic

on the Earth.

A bracing, gentle wind

played with her hair,

reaching her waist.

A twinkly, ardent gaze.

Cherry-ripe lips.

The tremulous agitated breast

resembled in miniature

the risen Sun and the Moon

staying at the same elevation —

the breast of the Galaxy.

The bridegroom placed his palms

under the violently-round

tight breasts.

Through them

he perceived the Galaxy,

felt its heartbeat.

He thought about the moment

when the Galaxy and the beloved —

two flames of one fire —

one through the other

would become his wife.

Having had realized

the raft

was being carried away,

they dove into the ocean

and for a long, long time

swam toward the shore.

A dolphin swam not far off.