I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn’t born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
Джордж Оруэлл (1903–1950)
Любовная история
Когда приехал, юн и глуп,
В далёкий Мандалай,
В бирманку вдруг влюбился я,
Прекрасную, как май.
Златая кожа, чернь волос
И губы — что коралл.
«За двадцать рупий ляг со мной,
Красотка!» — я позвал.
Взглянула — так чиста, грустна,
Мила — не передать, —
И нежным детским голоском
Сказала: «Двадцать пять».
* * *
Живи я лет двести тому назад,
Я б, верно, имел приход
И муки грешникам сулил,
Не ведая забот.
Но я рожден в наш развратный век
И эта стезя мне закрыта,
Поскольку я не брею усов,
А все священники — бриты.
Казалось, еще не так давно
Отлично умели мы
Блаженной праздностью усыплять
Мятежные наши умы.
И в те счастливые времена
Мы дерзостно верить смели,
Что в прах разлетится мирское зло
От зяблика нежной трели.
Но птицы и песни, прогулки верхом,
Ресниц безнадежный взмах,
Игра плотвы в прозрачном ручье —
Остались лишь в сладких снах.
Днесь светлым грезам вышел срок
И мы их в себе убили.
Днесь вместо юноши на коне —
Толстяк в автомобиле.
А я на распутье стою один
И, словно Юджин Арам,
Не знаю, за кем теперь идти —
За попом иль за комиссаром.
О светлом будущем комиссар
По радио мне вещает,
Но и поп легковушку «Остин-7»
Хоть завтра обещает.
А мечтал я о жизни в раю земном —
Где сегодня мои мечты?
Нет, я не рожден для наших дней!
А Смит? А Джонс? А ты?
Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937)
The Firing Party
(1917)
I shall not see them sweating at that task:
It was too much of any man to ask;
The death that gets you certain, soon or late;
Meanwhile the mess, the mud, the noise, the hate.
But I shall see through bandages the white
Cheeks round the gun-barrel, and then night.
Was it cowardice from fight’s short shock to creep
Into a nightmare of eternal sleep;
My only fault that I misjudged my spirit
And volunteered, and now disgrace inherit?
Still will bombardment fill the noisy sky,
Still will old comrades fight and wonder why;
But soon they’ll join me — those that I out-raced,
Reaching the goal too early, and disgraced.
The flower of sleep will blow on either grave
And wheat frequent the coward as the brave,
Disliking only where the trenches ploughed
And ordnance delved, the fiery liquids flowed,
Where war’s red feet his wicked winepress trod,
An outrage on the peaceful hopes of God.
Classic Encounter
Arrived upon the downs of asphodel
I walked towards the military quarter
To find the sunburnt ghosts of allied soldiers
Killed on the Chersonese.
I met a band of palefaced weary men
Got up in old equipment. “Hi”, I said
‘Are you Gallipoli?’
And one, the leader, with a voice of gold,
Answered: “No. Ours, sir, was an older bungle.
We are Athenian hopltes who sat down
Before young Syracuse.
‘Need I recount our too-much-memoired end?
The hesitancy of our General Stuff,
The battle of the Harbour, where Hope fled
But we could not?
‘Not our disgrace in that”, the leader added,
‘But we are those proficient in the arts
Freed in return for the repeated verses
Of our Euripides.
‘Those honeyed words did not soothe Cerebrus’
(The leader grinned), ‘For sulky Charon hire
Deficient, and by Rhadamanthos ruled
No mitigation.
‘And yet with men, born victims of their ears
The chorus of the weeping Troades
Prevailed to gain the freedom of our limbs
And waft us back to Athens.
‘Through every corridor of this old barracks
We wander without friends; not fallen or
Survivors in a military sense:
Hence our disgrace’.
He turned; and as the rank mists took them in
They chanted of the God to Whom men pray,
Whether He be Compulsion, or All-Fathering,
Or Fate and blind.
Poem
High on a bough beneath the moonlight pale
That over-rated bird the nightingale
Sang and sang on. I thought my heart would break
At first, to feel again that forlorn ache
Across the waste of history — “Wine, Red Wine!”
Fitzgerald’s Nightingale, with voice divine,
Called out — “to stain my rose-love’s pale cheeks red!”
And Keats arose, among the wintry dead,
And testifies, his sunken eyes ashine —
The song; dusk; dream; and oozy eglantine!