THE BOOK OF POEMS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ... - TopReferat

В буреющий снег полей
Храм под дождем опускался
И в сумерки растворялся
Замерзшим забытым ягненком,
Разорванной смятою грудой.
Печальное постное пенье
С врачебным презреньем вонзалось
Мне в сердце—и там оказалось
То же, что и у всех—
Тьмы потоки, безмерности малость,
Бог, завернутый в черный мех.
Sad Lenten singing
Lightly penetrated under my ribs,
And the icon lamp of my heart
It rubbed
With its palm.
As if I myself became
A soft white church,
And crowds of children and old women,
Crossing themselves and blinking, entered
My womb and bowed to my heart,
And my heart like a smoking censer
Rocked, so evenly rocked.
But when they left—
Into the browning snow of the fields
The temple collapsed under the rain
And dissolved in the twilight
Like a frozen forgotten lamb,
Like a torn, crumpled heap.
Sad Lenten singing
With medical scorn was piercing
My heart—and there appeared
The same thing that is in everyone—
Streams of darkness, a bit of immensity,
God, wrapped up in black fur.
In this poem Lavinia describes her emotional and spiritual reaction to sad, Lenten singing
in concrete, physical terms. She transforms the song into a physical entity which can
exert its force on her literally as well as metaphorically: it enters her body, penetrating
under her ribs and rubbing the icon lamp of her heart. The importance of the physical
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