why the beige kurd sings

     ”The Monkey

It was hot. Forests were burning. Time
tediously dragging. At the neighbouring dacha
the cockerel crowed. I went out past the gate.
There, propped against the fence, on the bench,
a vagrant was dozing, a Serb, thin and dark.
A cross of heavy silver hung on his
half-naked chest. Drops of sweat
were rolling down him. Up on the fence
a monkey in a red skirt was sitting
greedily chewing the leaves
of the dusty lilacs. Her leather collar
was pulled back by a heavy chain,
catching her throat. The Serb, hearing me,
woke up, wiped off his sweat and asked me
to give him some water. But he barely sipped—
how cold was it?—put a dish on the bench
and at once the monkey, dipping
a finger in the water, seized
the dish in both her hands.
She drank, crouched on all fours,
her elbows leaning on the bench.
Her chin nearly touched the planks,
her backbone arched high above her dark
and balding head. It was the position
Darius must once have taken, bending
at a puddle in the road the day he fled
in front of Alexander’s mighty phalanx.
When she had drunk it all, the monkey
swept the dish from the bench, stood up
and—when could I ever forget this moment?—
offered me her black and calloused hand,
still cool from the water, extending it…
I have shaken hands with beauties, poets,
leaders of nations—not one hand displayed
a line of such nobility! Not on hand
has ever touched my hand so like a brother’s!
God is my witness, no one has looked at me
so wisely and so deeply in the eye,
indeed into the bottom of my soul.
This animal, destitute, called up in my heart
the sweetness of a deep and ancient legend.
Life in that instant seemed to me complete;
a choir of sea-waves, winds and spheres
was shining and was bursting in my ear
with organ music, thundering, as once
it did in other, immemorial days.

Then the Serb got up, patted a tambourine.
Taking up her seat on his left shoulder
with measured rocking, the monkey rode
like a maharajah on an elephant.
The enormous crimson sun
stripped of its rays
hang in the opalescent smoke. A sultry
thunderlessness covered the feeble wheat.

That was the day of the declaration of war.”

--Vladislav Khodasevich, Selected Poems (tr P Daniels, 2013)

The Gnostic Faustus.