Butterfly – Joseph Brodsky

I

To tell, that you are dead?
But you only lived for a day.
How much sadness in a joke
Creator! barely
can pronounce
"Lived" - the unity of the date
birth and when you
in my hand
crumbled, me
confused to subtract
one of two quantities
within a day.

II

Then, what are the days for us -
nothing. Only
nothing. You can't pin them,
and the food of the eyes
won't do: they
on white background,
not having a body,
invisible. days,
they like you; rather,
what can weigh
reduced tenfold
one of the days?

III

To tell, which is not at all
you? But what
in my hand is so similar
with you? and color -
not the fruit of nothingness.
At whose prompt
and this is how the paints are put?
Hardly i,
muttering lump
words, alien to color,
imagine this
palette smog.

IV

On your wings
pupils, eyelashes -
beauties, birds -
scraps of whose,
tell me, it's faces,
flying portrait?
Which, tell, your case
particles, grains
is still life:
of things, whether fruit?
and even fishing
trophy extended.

V

maybe, you are a landscape,
and, taking a magnifying glass,
i will find a group
nymph, dance, beach.
Is it light there, like day?
or it's sad there,
like at night? and shone
what is in it
ascended to the sky?
whose figures are in it?
Tell, from what nature
it was made?

WE

I think, What are you -
and that, and this:
stars, faces, subject
you have features.
Who was that jeweler,
what, not frowning eyebrow,
applied in miniature
on them that world,
what drives us crazy,
takes us in pincers,
where are you, as a thought about a thing,
we are the thing itself.

VII

Tell, why pattern
such was given
you just have a day
at the edge of the lakes,
whose amalgam is for the future
keeps space?
And you take away the chance
such a short time
get into the net,
flutter in the palm of your hand,
at the moment of the chase
to capture the pupil.

VIII

You won't answer me
not for a reason
shyness and not
with evils, and no
then, that you are dead.
Alive, dead -
but every creature of God
as a sign of kinship
granted a voice for
communication, singing:
extending the moment,
minutes, of the day.

IX

And you - you are deprived
this pledge.
But, reasoning strictly,
that's better: on
what a hell to be in heaven
in debt, in the register.
Do not lament, if a
your century, your weight
worthy of being silent:
sound is also a burden.
Disembodied, than time,
you soundless.

X

Without feeling, not
lived to fear,
you curl lighter than dust
over the flower bed, outside
like a prison
with her suffocation
the past with the future,
and that's why
when you fly to the meadow
wanting to feed,
takes shape
the air itself suddenly.

XI

So does the pen,
sliding on the surface
lined notebook,
not knowing about
the fate of your line,
where is the wisdom, heresy
mingled, but trusting
hand shocks,
in whose fingers the speech beats
quite dumb,
not removing dust from the flower,
but the weight off the shoulders.

XII

Such beauty
and the term is so short,
connecting, guess
crooked mouth:
don't make it clearer,
what really
the world was created without a purpose,
and if with her,
then the goal is not us.
Entomologist friend,
there are no needles for light
and no for darkness.

XIII

Say goodbye to you?
as the form of the day?
there are people, whose sanity
cuts ringworm
oblivion; but look:
therefore to blame
only that, that behind
they don't have days
with a bed for two,
not dense dreams,
not the past - but clouds
your sisters!

XIV

You are better, than nothing.
Verney: you are closer
and more visible. But inside
one hundred percent
you are related to him.
In your flight
it reached the flesh;
and that's why
you are in a hustle and bustle
worthy of a look
as an easy obstacle
between him and me.

 

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Alexander Pushkin