«Человек, первым открывший Бродского Западу». Беседы с Джорджем Клайном

John Donne has sunk in sleep… All things besideare sleeping too: walls, bed, and floor – all sleep.The table, pictures, carpets, hooks and bolts,clothes-closets, cupboards, candles, curtain – allnow sleep: the washbowl, bottle, tumbler, bread,breadknife and china, crystal, pots and pans,bed-sheets and nightlamp, chests of drawers, a clock,a mirror, stairway, doors. Night everywhere,night in all things: in corners, in men’s eyes,in bed-sheets, in the papers on a desk,in the worm-eaten words of sterile speech,in logs and fire-tongs, in the blackened coalsof a dead fireplace – in each thing.In undershirts, boots, stockings, shadows, shadesbehind the mirror; in the backs of chairs,in bed and washbowl, in the crucifix,in linen, in the broom beside the door,in slippers. All these things have sunk in sleep.Yes, all things sleep. The window. Snow beyond.A roof-slope, whiter than a tablecloth,the roof ’s high ridge. A neighborhood in snow,carved to the quick by this sharp windowframe.Arches and walls and windows – all asleep.Wood paving-blocks, stone cobbles, gardens, grills.No light will flare, no turning wheel will creak…Chains, walled enclosures, ornaments, and curbs.Doors with their rings, knobs, hooks are all asleep —their locks and bars, their bolts and cunning keys.One hears no whisper, rustle, thump, or thud.Only the snow creaks. All men sleep. Dawn comesnot soon. All jails and locks have lapsed in sleep.The iron weights in the fish-shop are asleep.The carcasses of pigs sleep too. Backyardsand houses. Watch-dogs in their chains lie cold.In cellars sleeping cats hold up their ears.Mice sleep, and men. And London soundly sleeps.A schooner nods at anchor. The salt seatalks in its sleep with snow beneath her hull,and melts into the distant sleeping sky.John Donne has sunk in sleep, with him the sea.Chalk cliffs now tower in sleep above the sands.This island sleeps, embraced by lonely dreams,

and every garden now is triple-barred.Pines, maples, birches, firs, and spruce – all sleep.On mountain slopes steep mountain-streams and pathsnow sleep. Foxes and wolves. Bears in their dens.The snow drifts high at burrow-entrances.All the birds sleep. Their songs are heard no more.Nor is the crow’s hoarse caw. At night the owl’sdark hollow laugh is quenched. The open fieldsof England now are stilled. A clear star flames.The mice are penitent. All creatures sleep.The dead lie calmly in their graves and dream.The living, in the oceans of their gowns,sleep – each alone – within their beds. Or twoby two. Hills, woods, and rivers sleep. All birdsand beasts now sleep – nature alive and dead.But still the snow spins white from the black sky.There, high above men’s heads, all are asleep.The angels sleep. Saints – to their saintly shame —have quite forgotten this our anxious world.Dark Hell-fires sleep, and glorious Paradise.No one goes forth from home at this bleak hour.Even God has gone to sleep. Earth is estranged.Eyes do not see, and ears perceive no sound.The Devil sleeps. Harsh enmity has fallenasleep with him on snowy English fields.All horsemen sleep[199]. And the Archangel, withhis trumpet. Horses, softly swaying, sleep.And all the cherubim, in one great hostembracing, doze beneath St. Paul’s high dome.John Donne has sunk in sleep. His verses sleep.His images, his rhymes, and his strong linesfade out of view. Anxiety and sin,alike grown slack, sleep in his syllables.And each verse whispers to its next of kin,‘Move on a bit.’ But each stands so remotefrom Heaven’s Gates, so poor, so pure and dense,that all seems one. All are asleep. The vaultaustere of iambs soars in sleep. Like guards,the trochees stand and nod to left and right.The vision of Lethean waters sleeps.The poet’s fame sleeps soundly at its side.All trials, all sufferings, are sunk in sleep.And vices sleep. Good lies in Evil’s arms.

The prophets sleep. The bleaching snow seeks out,through endless space, the last unwhitened spot.All things have lapsed in sleep. The swarms of books,the streams of words, cloaked in oblivion’s ice,sleep soundly. Every speech, each speech’s truth,is sleeping. Linked chains, sleeping scarcely clank.All soundly sleep: the saints, the Devil, God.Their wicked and their faithful servants. Snowalone sifts, rustling, on the darkened roads.And there are no more sounds in all the world.But hark! Do you not hear in the chill nighta sound of sobbing, whisperings of fear?There someone stands, disclosed to winter’s blast,and weeps. There someone stands in the dense gloom.His voice is thin. His voice is needle-thin,yet without tread. And he in solitudeswims through the falling snow – cloaked in cold mistthat stiches night to dawn. The lofty dawn.‘Whose sobs are those? My angel, is it you?Do you await my coming, there alonebeneath the snow? Walking – without my love —in darkness home? Do you cry in the gloom?’No answer. – ’Is it you, o cherubim,whose muted tears put me in mindof some sepulchral choir? Have you resolvedto quit my sleeping church? Is it not you?’No answer. – ‘Is it you, o Paul? Your voicemost certainly is coarsened by stern speech.Have you not bowed your grey head in the gloomto weep?’ But only silence makes reply.‘Is that the Hand which looms up everywhereto shield a grieving glance in the deep dark?Is it not thou, Lord? No, my thoughts run wild.And yet how lofty is the voice that weeps.’No answer. Silence. – ‘Gabriel, have younot blown your trumpet to the roar of hounds?Why did I stand alone with open eyeswhile horsemen saddled their swift steeds? Yet eachthing sleeps. Enveloped in huge gloom, the Houndsof Heaven race in packs. O Gabriel,do you not sob, encompassèd aboutby winter dark, alone, with your great horn?’

‘No, it is I, your soul, John Donne, who speaks.I grieve alone upon the heights of Heaven,because my labors did bring forth to lifefeelings and thoughts as heavy as stark chains.Bearing this burden, you could yet fly uppast those dark sins and passions, mounting higher.You were a bird, your people did you seein every place, as you did soar abovetheir sloping roofs. And you did glimpse the seas,and distant lands, and Hell – first in your dreams,then waking. You did see a jewelled Heavenset in the wretched frame of men’s low lusts.And you saw Life: your Island was its twin.And you did face the ocean at its shores.The howling dark stood close at every hand.And you did soar past God, and then drop back,for this harsh burden would not let you riseto that high vantage point from which this worldseems naught but ribboned rivers and tall towers —that point from which, to him who downward stares,this dread Last Judgement seems no longer dread.The radiance of that Country does not fade.From there all here seems a faint, fevered dream.From there our Lord is but a light that gleams,through fog, in window of the farthest house.The fields lie fallow, furrowed by no plough.The years lie fallow, and the centuries.Forests alone stand, like a steady wall.Rain batters the high head of giant grass.The first woodcutter – he whose withered mount,in panic fear of thickets, blundered thence —will climb a pine to catch a sudden glimpseof fires in his own valley, far away.All things are distant. What is near is dim.The level glance slides from a roof remote.All here is bright. No din of baying houndor tolling bell disturbs the silent air.And, sensing that all things are far away,he’ll wheel his horse back quickly toward the woods.And instantly, reins, sledge, night, his poor mount,Himself – will melt into a Scriptural dream.But here I stand and weep. The road is gone.I am condemned to live among these stones.

I cannot fly up in my body’s flesh;such flight at best will come to me through deathin the wet earth, when I’ve forgotten you,my world, forgotten you once and for all.I’ll follow, in the torment of desire,to stitch this parting up with my own flesh.But listen! While with weeping I disturbyour rest, the busy snow whirls through the dark,not melting, as it stitches up this hurt —its needles flying back and forth, back, forth!It is not I who sob. It’s you, John Donne:you lie alone. Your pans in cupboards sleep,while snow builds drifts upon your sleeping house —while snow sifts down to earth from highest Heaven.’Like some great bird, he sleeps in his own nest,his pure path and his thirst for purer life,himself entrusting to that steady starwhich now is closed in clouds. And like a bird,his soul is pure, and his life’s path on earth,although it needs must wind through sin,is still closer to nature than that tall crow’s nestwhich soars above the starlings’ empty homes.Like some great bird, he too will wake at dawn;but now he lies beneath a veil of white,while snow and sleep stitch up the throbbing voidbetween his soul and his own dreaming flesh.All things have sunk in sleep. But one last verseawaits its end, baring its fangs to snarlthat carnal love is but a poet’s duty —spiritual love the essence of a priest.Whatever millstone these swift waters turnwill grind the same coarse grain in this one world.For though our life may be a thing to share,who is there in this world to share our death?Man’s garment gapes with holes. It can be torn,by him who will, at this edge or at that.It falls to shreds and is made whole again.Once more it’s rent. And only the far sky,in darkness, brings the healing needle home.Sleep, John Donne, sleep. Sleep soundly, do not fretyour soul. As for your coat, it’s torn; all limpit hangs. But see, there from the clouds will shinethat Star which made your world endure till now.1963