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Вячеславу Лейкину, Стелле Вербицкой, Профессору Эллен Чансес, Крейгу Келлер, Мастеру Ченг Хсианг Ю, Сенсею Грегу О’Коннор, Роберту Фридману

      и членам важных для меня сообществ: Миллбурнского клуба, Beth Hatikvah synagogue, the Aikido Centers of New Jersey, Madison Studio Yoga, the Arts by the People program.

      Я признательна Брюсу Эсригу, который помог мне отредактировать англоязычные тексты, проявив при этом свойственные ему вдумчивость, остроумие, любовь к слову (а также пристрастие к точке с запятой).

      Искренне благодарю Рашель Миневич, Эда Побужанского и Александра (Сашу) Казакова за полезные советы и ценные замечания.

      Я рада, что Анастасия Шеперд стала моим партнёром в литературной игре, которую мы назвали «Странники в странном мире». Часть этой игры вошла в цикл The Age of discovery.

      With love to my family: Ada and Zinovy Kane, Bruce Esrig and Ariel

      With gratitude to my teachers:

      Vyacheslav Leikin,

      Stella Verbitskaya,

      Professor Ellen Chances,

      Craig Keller,

      Master Cheng Hsiang Yu,

      Sensei Greg O’Connor,

      Robert Friedman,

      to the communities of the Millburn Club, Beth Hatikvah synagogue, the Aikido Centers of New Jersey, Madison Studio Yoga, and the Arts by the People program.

      Acknowledgements

      I am grateful to Bruce Esrig for editing the English language texts. He brought to this task his penchant for deep thought, his playful sense of humor and his love of words and of semicolons.

      I want to thank Rashel Minevich, Ed Pobuzhansky and Aleksandr (Sasha) Kazakov for insightful comments and valuable suggestions.

      I am glad that Anastasya Shepherd is my co-creator of the literary game we called “Travelers in a strange world”. This game is great fun to play, and it inspired “The Age of discovery”.

      Metamorphosis

      English language poems

      Metamorphosis

      What I used to think of

      As myself

      Turned out to be

      A chrysalis.

      Now it has split open.

      An old woman is slowly emerging.

      She will wait patiently

      For her crumpled rags to unfurl,

      For the sun to harden them

      Into wings.

      Ripening

      My little daughter wakes in tears:

      She fancies that her bed is drawn

      into a dimness which appears

      to be the deep of all her fears

      but which, in point of fact, is dawn.

Vladimir Nabokov

      Not life or death,

      Creation or its fall,

      Not good or evil,

      But the whole, the all —

      This fruit of knowledge

      Is still dim, still green.

      The ripening of dawn

      Remains unseen.

      The soul does not yet trust

      The sense of sight,

      Still hides in terror

      From the kindling light.

      It’s here, though each glimpse of it is brief,

      It’s here, the lambent glow of joy and grief.

      The Age of discovery

      1. Indra’s net

      Am I reflections of the world or the mirrors reflecting it?

Anastasya Shepherd

      One story of this world

      Begins with “Let there be light”.

      I do not think that punctuation

      Had been invented

      When these words were first recorded.

      But judging from what follows,

      An exclamation mark

      Should cap that sentence.

      But what about Indra’s net?

      What are the words

      That first emitted and still carry

      The light that knits it into one great whole?

      What punctuation should we use?

      A question mark seems most fitting.

      You and I, like everybody else,

      Are both:

      Jewels linked into a net

      And reflections bouncing within a hall of mirrors.

      But let us not get trapped.

      We have the power to play it

      Like a game, a dance,

      A laugh-inducing tickle.

      2. Voyagers

      Я список кораблей прочёл до середины

Осип Мадельштам

      …The list Of soaring ships I’ve read up to the middle.

Osip Mandelstam (translated by Alex Sitnitsky)

      Wake up! Wake up!

      There is a porthole, a port, a portal,

      A momentary gap

      Right here,

      Where the past

      Meets with the future.

      A dawn breeze is rising.

      You can glimpse the swaying masts,

      The white sails being hoisted.

      You can hear the seagulls laughing,

      The lines groaning, singing,

      Taut with force

      Ready to propel the ship.

      Let us arise and cross the threshold,

      Let us run

      To

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