Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.…

Проснувшись в сон, я мыслил в этом сне:
Моя судьба — там, где неведом страх,
Учусь в пути, и цель понятна мне.Мы чувством думаем. Но что понять извне?
Моя душа — лишь звук в чужих ушах,…

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.We romped until the pans…

Свалить ребенка с ног
Ты мог парами виски,
Но я повис, как дог,
И вальс был слаще в риске.Посуду тряс сумбур…

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,…

Я изведал печаль карандашей,
Аккуратно лежащих в коробках,
Я знаю грусть дырокола, клея и скоросшивателей —
Боль, тоску и безродность безупречных учреждений,…

The small birds swirl around;
The high cicadas chirr;
A towhee pecks the ground;
I look at the first star:…

Витание пернатых,
Журчание цикад.
В заоблачных пенатах
Зажегся звездный взгляд:…

Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night…

На Запад поезд мчит,
Качает землю ритм,
Колеса говорят,
Я вглядываюсь в ночь,…

Often I meet, on walking from a door,
A flash of objects never seen before.As known particulars come wheeling by,
They dart across a corner of the eye.They flicker faster than a blue-tailed swift,
Or when dark follows dark in lightning rift.They slip between the fingers of my sight,…

Порой замечаешь, на улицу выйдя —
Вдруг что-то мелькнёт, чего раньше не видел.
Понять не пытаясь его существа,
Лишь краешком глаза уловишь едва.…

My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.…

Кричат секреты вслух,
К чему язык теперь?
И сердце настежь, друг,
И всем открыта дверь,…

1A cloud moved close. The bulk of the wind shifted.
A tree swayed over water.
A voice said:
Stay. Stay by the slip-ooze. Stay.Dearest tree, I said, may I rest here?…

Where were the greenhouses going,
Lunging into the lashing
Wind driving water
So far down the river…

The wind billowing out the seat of my britches,
My feet crackling splinters of glass and dried putty,
The half-grown chrysanthemums staring up like accusers,
Up through the streaked glass, flashing with sunlight,…

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.But when he brushes up against a screen,…

(My student, thrown by a horse)I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once started into talk, the light syllables leaped for her.
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,…

Я помню ее кудряшки, похожие на усики винограда,
Ее быстрый взгляд и зубастенькую улыбку
И как она, вступив в разговор, окружалась легкими звуками
И с восторгом доказывала что-то свое,…

Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will—
The right thing happens to the happy man.The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;…

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his Ear,
He thinks about it for a Year;And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird),…

What's greater, Pebble or Pond?
What can be known? The Unknown.
My true self runs toward a Hill
More! O More! visible.Now I adore my life…

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!…