If you should sail for Trebizond, or die,
Or cry another name in your first sleep,
Or see me board a train, and fail to sigh,
Appropriately, I'd clutch my breast and weep.
And you, if I should wander through the door,
Or sin, or seek a nunnery, or save
My lips and give my cheek, would tread the floor
And aptly mention poison and the grave.

Therefore the mooning world is gratified,
Quoting how prettily we sigh and swear;
And you and I, correctly side by side,
Shall live as lovers when our bones are bare
And though we lie forever enemies,
Shall rank with Abelard and Heloise.

Dorothy Parker

По холмам поднебесья,
по дороге неблизкой,
возвращаясь без песни
из земли италийской,
над страной огородов,
над родными полями
пролетит зимородок
и помашет крылами.

И с высот Олимпийских,
недоступных для галки,
там, на склонах альпийских,
где желтеют фиалки, --
хоть глаза ее зорки
и простор не тревожит, --
видит птичка пригорки,
но понять их не может.

Между сосен на кручах
птица с криком кружится
и, замешкавшись в тучах,
вновь в отчизну стремится.
Помнят только вершины
да цветущие маки,
что на Монте-Кассино
это были поляки.

(Иосиф Бродский)

* * *
Буря мчится. Снег летит.
Ветер воет и свистит.
Буря страшная ревет,
Буря крышу с дома рвет.

Крыша гнется и грохочет.
Буря плачет и хохочет.
Злится буря, точно зверь,
Лезет в окна, лезет в дверь.

Даниил Хармс
1931

Hermes

Messenger, courier, bearer of commands,
he is the god assigned to dart
down to give Calypso the unwelcome
news she must release Odysseus
from her island. Having said his piece,
he gets to zoom back up to Mount Olympus.
As for the mess that nymphs as well as men
fall heir to – loss and jealousy and grief –
he lets her mop it up.
These days, he’s less
of a separator than a joiner.
A facilitator (chat rooms, message boards)
who steers adopted children toward their birth
mothers, speeds classmates trying to trace classmates,
terrorists looking for likeminded friends,
he’s busier than ever. But the end
of every task is just as Homer tells it:
lightly he steps away from our entanglement
into a neutral zone, an endless noon
immune to disappointment and desire.

Rachel Hadas (2004)

The odd thing put away
in the wrong place – cups and plates
back in the cupboard
that I always leave out,
curtains open on the street
that I always keep drawn,
remind me of your recent brief
progress through here,
looking for something in the attic.
How could I forget:
butter in the fridge, but never eggs,
burnt matches everywhere,
in spite of the gas lighter,
jam jars soaking in water
to get the labels off.
How typical of you
to give the Chinese teapot a last chance
to prove itself in company.
And look at that tea towel
slung like your signature
over the back of a chair.
I could weep for the small spoons
lying down with the forks,
the corkscrew with the tea strainer.
Leave them where they are forever?
Or harden my heart
and put them back where they belong?

Hugo Williams (2008)

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practises tying
His father's tie there in secret

And the face of the father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

-- Donald Justice

I'll keep a little tavern
Below the high hill's crest,
Wherein all grey-eyed people
May set them down and rest.

There shall be plates a-plenty,
And mugs to melt the chill
Of all the grey-eyed people
Who happen up the hill.

There sound will sleep the traveller,
And dream his journey's end,
But I will rouse at midnight
The falling fire to tend.

Aye, 'tis a curious fancy—
But all the good I know
Was taught me out of two grey eyes
A long time ago.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

221B

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears–
Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

– Vincent Starrett

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

The Horses

For all of the horses butchered on the battlefield,
Shell-shocked tripping up over their own intestines,
Drowning in the mud the best war memorial
Is in Homer: two horses that refuse to budge
Despite threats and sweet-talk and the whistling whip,
Immovable as a tombstone their heads drooping
In front of the streamlined motionless chariot,
Hot tears spilling from their eyelids onto the ground
Because they are still in mourning for Patroclus
Their charioteer, their shiny manes bedraggled
Under the yoke pads on either side of the yoke.

MICHAEL LONGLEY (2000)