Читать книгу In Praise of Poetry - Ольга Седакова - Страница 15

5. SIN

You can deceive the high heavens—

for high heaven cannot possibly see everything.

You can deceive deepest earth—

for deep earth sleeps, and hears nothing.

Clairvoyants, fortune-tellers, and seers are fair game—

but you will never deceive your own self.

Alas, mirrors, glass panes, and forest streams

love not the sinner among us:

strangers’ blood courses there like the wind,

and twists like a serpent in pain.

“Tomorrow we shall awaken early

and go to see the fortune-teller,

we shall give her money for her work

so she may tell us—

she sees nothing. Nothing.”