*Van 1668. - Afgedrukt volgens de tekst der afzonderlike uitgave in plano (Unger, no. 705).
Opschrift: Maria van den Vondel, dochter van Vondel's zoon Joost en diens eerste vrouw, Aeltje van Bancken, werd in 1648 te Amsterdam geboren, stierf daar 7 Dec. 1668 en. werd 17 Dec. in de Nieuwe kerk begraven. Zie over haar Sterck, Oorkonden, blz. 208-13. Zie voor het motto deel 8, blz. 721.

5-8Weerklank van de bekende rei uit Lucifer (vs. 281-300).

8omvang: omtrek, begrenzing (Ned. Wdb. X, 671).

12Van: door.

13-14Al het goede dat in de geschapen wereld bij kleine gedeelten verspreid ligt.

16springaêr: bronader.

17herquam: afkomstig is.

18verschoven: verworpen.

21waelt: gaat onzeker heen en weer; de lely: de kompasnaald in de vorm van een heraldieke lelie (Ned. Wdb. VIII, 1536).

22de zeilsteen: de steen die de kompasnaald magneties maakt.

23de starlichte as: de Noordster aan de hemelpool.

24wit: doel; versteeken: verstoten, afgehouden.

FROM THE MORNING by Arsenii Tarskovsky

From the morning I was waiting for you yesterday,

They guessed that you wouldn't come,

Do you remember the weather?

Like a feast day! And I went out without a coat.

Today you came, and they have fixed for us

An especially gloomy day,

And the rain, and the especially late hour,

And the drops are running along the cold branches.

They can't be calmed with a word, nor dried with a cloth…

AS A CHILD... by Arsenii Tarskovsky

As a child I once fell ill

From fear and hunger. I’d scratched off the scab

From my lips and licked my lips; I remembered

The cool and salty taste.        

But still I go, but still I go, I go,

I sit on the front stairs and warm myself,

Delirious, I wander as though to follow

The tune of the pied-piper to the river,

I warm myself on the stairs, consumed by fever.

But mother stands and beckons, she seems

Not far away but unapproachable:

I approach a little, it’s only seven steps,

She beckons, I approach but she still stands

Only seven steps away, she beckons.

Heat

Grips me, I undid my collar and laid down –

And trumpets started trumpeting, my eyelids

Were struck by light, and horses galloped, mother

Is flying above the cobblestones, she beckons –

And vanished…

And now I dream

Beneath the apple trees, a white ward,

And the white bed-sheet beneath my throat,

And the white doctor looks down at me,

And the white nurse stands beside my feet

Ruffling her wings. And they remained.

But mother came and beckoned –

And vanished…

EURYDICE by Arsenii Tarkovsky

A human has a body

Just one, like one alone,

The soul has had enough

Of its continuous frame

With all its ears and eyes

The size of a silver coin

And skin like scarves on scarves,

As if hung on a rack.

It flies out through the cornea

Into the heavenly clearness,

Upon the icy spoke,

Upon the bird-drawn chariot

And listens through the bars

Of its own living prison

To the crack of woods and fields,

To the horn of seven seas.

A bodiless soul is shameful,

Like a body without its garment, -

No reasoning or deed,

No impetus or line.

A riddle without solution:

Who will return again,

From dancing on that stage,

Where nobody is dancing?

And I dream of another

Soul dressed in different clothes:

It burns and runs across

From timidity to hope,

With fire that leaves the earth,

Like spirit without a shadow,

Leaving a bunch of lilac

On the table for remembrance.

Run, child, don't lament

For poor Eurydice,

And chase your copper hoop

With a stick around the world,

While, still hardly audible,

Joyfully and dryly,

In answer to each step

The earth resounds in your ears.

SO SUMMER HAS PASSED by Arsenii Tarskovsky

So summer has passed

Like it never had been

It is warm in the sun

But it’s no consolation.

All that might have come off

Landed right in my hand

Like a five-fingered leaf

But it’s no consolation.

Neither evil nor good

Were expended in vain

All was burning and glowed

But it’s no consolation.

Life arched over its wing

It took care and preserved

And, in truth, I was blessed

But it’s no consolation.

The leaves were not burned

The boughs were not broken

The day’s rinsed like glass

But it’s no consolation.

LIFE, LIFE by Arsenii Tarskovsky

1

I don’t believe in presentiments, and signs

Don’t frighten me. I run from neither slander

Nor poison. In the world, there is no death:

All are immortal. Everything is immortal.

One should not be afraid of death at seventeen,

Nor seventy. There is neither gloom nor death

In this world, only clarity and light.

We are all already on the shore of the sea,

And I am one of those who pulls in nets,

When immortality swims by like a shoal.

2

Live in a house—and the house won’t collapse.

I will summon any of the centuries,

I will enter it and build a house in it.

Here is why your children and your wives

Are seated with me at a single table,—

At a single table, your ancestor and grandson:

The coming time is being enacted now,

And if I raise my arm up just a little,

All five of the rays will remain with you.

I propped up every day of the past,

Supporting with my collarbones.

I measured time with a surveying chain,

And passed through it, as if through the Urals.

3

I picked the age according to my stature.

Going south, we held dust over the steppe;

The tall weeds smoked; the grasshopper made mischief,

Touched horseshoes with its whisker, and prophesied,

And threatened me with destruction, like a monk.

I fastened my fate to the saddle;

And now, in the coming times, like a boy,

I raise myself up halfway in the stirrups.

For me my immortality is enough,

That my blood should flow from age to age.

For a faithful corner of unchanging warmth

I would pay wilfully with my own life,

Whenever its flying needle

Would lead me, like a thread, around the world.

MY SIGHT, MY STRENGTH, DIMS... by Arsenii Tarskovsky

My sight, my strength, dims,

Two invisible adamant spears;

My hearing deafens, full of distant thunder

And the breathing of home;

The knots of my tensed muscles have weakened,

Like grey oxen on a ploughed field;

Two wings at the back of my shoulders

Don’t shine anymore in the night.

I am a candle, I burned out at a feast.

Gather my wax in the morning,

And this page will prompt you

How to cry and what to be proud of,

How to give away the last third

Of joy and die easily,

And under the shade of an inadvertent home

How to burn as posthumously as a word.

‘FIRST MEETINGS’ by by Arsenii Tarkovsky (in film Zerkola – De Spiegel – 1975)

We celebrated every moment of our

First meetings, like an epiphany,

Alone in the entire world. You were

More daring, and lighter than a bird’s wing,

On the stairs, like dizziness,

Running down over the step and leading

Through the moist lilac to your domain,

From that side of the mirror’s glass.

When night set in, grace was given

To me, the altar gates

Were opened, and in the darkness

Nakedness shined and slowly bowed,

And, waking up: ‘May you be blessed!’

I said and knew, that my blessing

Was audacious: you slept,

And the lilac reached out from the table to touch

Your lashes with the universe’s blue

And the lashes, touched by the blue,

Were calm, and your hand was warm.

While in the crystal, the rivers pulsed,

The mountains smoked, the seas glimmered,

And you held a crystal sphere

On your palm, and you slept on the throne,

And—righteous God!—you were mine.

You woke up and transfigured

The daily human vocabulary,

And your speech was filled to the throat

With a full-bodied force, and the word ‘thou’

Revealed its new sense and it meant: ruler.

In the world everything was transfigured, even

Simple things—the basin, the jug,—when

Between us stood, as if on watch,

The stratified and solid water.

We were led, not knowing where.

Before us stepped out, as if mirages,

Miraculously built cities,

The mint itself was lying beneath our feet,

And birds were following the same path as us,

And fish were jumping out along the river,

And the sky opened out before our eyes…

When fate followed behind us on the trail,

Like a madman with a razor in his hand.

Remorseful Day

How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
 Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
 Soars the delightful day.

To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
 Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
 I never kept before.

Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
 Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
 Falls the remorseful day.

a.e. housman