"Rembrandt"

translation-take 2

House is empty.  The room’s damp and cold. 
Rain thrusts against door like against a dam.
Time’s expiring soon. Lonely and old,
Rembrandt paints his “Prodigal Son”. 

And the son’s on his knees, a cripple,
Doesn’t feel his feet, stare forlorn,
Shaven convict’s head, clothes ripped.
Dear boy, what you coming back from? 

All the roads are lost in darkness, 
And the darkness is vast and blind. 
What you’d left behind, dear? Barracks?
The taiga’s impassable wilds? 

What was torment that made your eyes barren,
Who corrupted you-people or war? 
Maybe winds of Judean desert
Left your skin scarred and soul burnt? 

Sounds are muffled, the world around, 
And the canvas, are equally dim.
Only face and hands of the father
Emanate light and glow and gleam.

Vain return is, we live, unconnected,
Earth’s not round now, changed is the game,
Childhood home, once resurrected-
Like a torched vessel goes aflame

Seagulls crying, rustling of raining, 
Cobwebs, gloom, desolation reign- 
And, last love, shines through all the painting,
By the dying, lone mournful man.

*************

* link to the original in Russian

** I’m really not sure whether I like it better or worse. I’m leaning both ways. I’m just at the point when it “needs” to be posted, on some strange scale of mine that deals with the distance from invisible something to something.

*** “Leave a comment” is back. Halleluja.