Читать книгу The Village on Horseback - Jesse Ball - Страница 40

There are three walking by the small river,

dividing the world’s belongings

into three. A hatted man in a road-stained cloak.

To the left, a miller bent upon a stick, who seems,

though crippled, to ask no help of his daughter,

she who wanders there

in the composition, the daylight rolled up

like a map against her scarlet hair.

They have been talking some time it seems

without passing beyond that row of hills

the young traveler would have crossed to come

to this crisis, to this dwelling place.

And yes, there is a mill, some four brushstrokes

delicately upon a distant withered lawn. Economy

constitutes this life: the daughter has but one

dress, that she wears; she has but one suitor,

soon to pass away; but one father, hateful,

gathering the plurals of sadness to himself;

one sadness, shared like bread; one world, beyond,

evoked once by the single traveler who has seen her

stark against foreshortened youth. For they grow old,

these wild daughters, bound to fathers

in grim lands. In them grief is a yellow tree, encircled

by a fence of bird-like angels. No shout will cause

this flock to rise to air. And here the light

is never strong enough for the face upon waking,

though it pools where the animals sleep,

and comes radiant at night through unreachable

fields, through windows which, seen with closed eyes,

confirm all dread—elsewhere there is a dance

that many have joined. She winces, and her one hand

is joined by the other, as if it were the painter himself, who,

painting an arm to hold the arm which looked

so hard to bear, had given himself away.

He was this traveler, Arravelli, who lied and yet did not lie, a young man who said he would return.