Wallace Stevens, «The Sick Man»

[raf_sh]

Уоллес Стивенс

больной


Как будто оркестры чернокожих плывут в небесах
Юга, оркестры тысяч чернокожих,
Терзая губные гармоники по ночам — а сейчас гитары.

Здесь же, на Севере, так запоздало, так поздно, слышны голоса,
Строй голосов, бессловесных, далеких, глубоких —
Плывущих хоров, долгие линии и повороты звучаний.

В постели же, в некоей комнате, одинокий, слушатель
Ждет унисона мелодий плывущих оркестров
И уходящих хоралов, ждет его — и представляет

Слова зимы, когда те и те соберутся вместе
На потолке дальней комнаты, где он лежит,
Слушатель, прислушиваясь к теням, их наблюдая,

Выуживая из себя самого, из всего, что в нем есть,
Речь для негромкой добротной хвалы, добротной, добротной хвалы,
Мирных, блаженных слов, ловко слаженных, спетых, сказанных.


1950


Wallace Stevens

The Sick Man


Bands of black men seem to be drifting in the air,
In the South, bands of thousands of black men,
Playing mouth organs in the night or, now, guitars.

Here in the North, late, late, there are voices of men,
Voices in chorus, singing without words, remote and deep,
Drifting choirs, long movements and turnings of sounds.

And in a bed in one room, alone, a listener
Waits for the unison of the music of the drifting bands
And the dissolving chorals, waits for it and imagines

The words of winter in which these two will come together,
In the ceiling of the distant room, in which he lies,
The listener, listening to the shadows, seeing them,

Choosing out of himself, out of everything within him,
Speech for the quiet, good hail of himself, good hail, good hail,
The peaceful, blissful words, well-tuned, well-sung, well-spoken.


1950
(This poem is from Opus Posthumous, published in 1957.)

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...It is maddening for the sick man to hear these two musics, to know that there somehow must exist an American libretto that will unify these instruments and these voices, and to feel that he is called to compose that libretto if he is to survive. Stevens did not live to invent such a text: but that he urgently wanted, at seventy, to conceive it, and felt he would remain a sick man if he could not write it, says a great deal about the Americanness of his imagination, and about the moral responsibility—not sufficiently credited—underlying his work («Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right»).

Helen Vendler, 1997 «Ice and Fire and Solitude»