Текст песни Иосиф Бродский - Квинтет

Quintet

           Mark Strand

        I

     Veko twitches. From mouth
     silence breaks out. European cities
     overtake each other at the stations. The smell of soap
     gives the inhabitant of the jungle the approaching enemy.
     Where your foot stepped
     White spots appear on the world map.

     In the throat pershit. The traveler asks for a drink.
     The kids to beat
     cry out the air with a shrill cry. Eyelid
     twitches. As for the columns, because
     someone always appears. Even covering my eyes
     even in a dream you see a person.

     And accumulates like a spit in the chest:
     "Give me ink and paper, and leave yourself
     away! "And the eyelid twitches. Inarticulate lamentations
     behind the wall (as if praying) increase longing.
     The monstrosity of what is happening in the brain
     gives an unfamiliar room a familiar shape.

        II

     Sometimes in the desert you hear a voice. You
     take out the camera to capture the features.
     But - it is getting dark. Sit down, have a joke
     with a south speaker
     a monkey that jumped from a palm tree and, not having time
     become a man, became a prostitute.

     It’s better to sail with a boat swinging on a wave,
     participating in geography, in blueness, and not
     only in history - this scab of land.
     Better cross Greenland creaking
     skiing, leaving behind
     icebergs and seal carcasses.

     The alphabet will not let you forget
     the purpose of your journey is point "B".
     There a raven cannot become a raven, no matter how croak;
     a mongrel is barking, rye drowning out the weed;
     there is a furrier over the animal’s skin,
     officers of the General Staff are working on a reddened map.

        III

     For thirty-seven years I have been staring into the fire.
     Veko twitches. Palm
     covered in sweat. Policeman taking documents
     goes to another room. Erected in a hurry
     the obelisk ends reluctantly in the clouds,
     as a blow to Euclid, as a trace of a comet.

     Night; having lived to gray hair, you have dinner alone,
     cattle to himself, mister to himself.
     Vobla lies across a coarse typed message
     the devil knows about the volcanic eruption,
     in other words, in a strange environment,
     resting its tail on "Last Prohibitions."

     I only understand the buzzing of flies
     in the eastern bazaars! On the sidewalk in two
     steps from the hotel, fish caught in the net,
     the traveler catches his mouth open:
     severe pain, on this killing, on that
     continues light.

        IV

     "Where is it?" - asks, smoothing the tuft,
     nephew. And wandering the folds of the mountains with a finger,
     “Here,” the niece says. Squeaky swing
     in the old garden. On the table is a bouquet
     violets. The sun dazzles parquet.
     Cello passages come from the living room.

     At night, the moon hangs over the plateau.
     The shadow of an elephant separates from the boulder.
     There is no self-interest in the silver of the stream.
     A sheet in a lonely room
     crumpled white (dark) just nude -
     painting of an unknown brush.

     In the spring, an ant worker swarms in the mud,
     rook appears, creatures of other blood;
     foliage covers the trunk at its bend.
     Autumn hawk gives circles
     above the village, counting chickens. And on the shoulders of the servant
     a white sagib jacket dangles ...

        V

     Was the word spoken? And if so, -
     in what language? Was there a boy? And how much ice
     need to be thrown into a glass to stop the Titanic
     thoughts? Does the whole role of particles remember?
     What is able to think at the sight of birds
     in the aquarium nerd?

     Now imagine an absolute void.
     A place without time. Actually the air. In that
     and in the other and the third side. Just mecca
     air. Oxygen, hydrogen. And in it
     finely twitches day after day