James Merrill - The Book of Ephraim (C) [tekst, tłumaczenie i interpretacja piosenki]

Correct but cautious, that first night, we asked
Our visitor’s name, era, habitat.
EPHRAIM came the answer. A Greek Jew
Born AD 8 at XANTHOS Where was that?
In Greece WHEN WOLVES & RAVENS WERE IN ROME
(Next day the classical dictionary yielded
A Xanthos on the Asia Minor Coast.)
NOW WHO ARE U We told him. ARE U XTIANS
We guessed so. WHAT A COZY CATACOMB
Christ had WROUGHT HAVOC in his family
ENTICED MY FATHER FROM MY MOTHERS BED
(I too had issued from a broken home–
The first of several facts to coincide.)
Later a favorite of TIBERIUS Died
AD 36 on CAPRI throttled
By the imperial guard for having LOVED
THE MONSTERS NEPHEW (sic) CALIGULA
Rapidly he went on––changing the subject?
A long incriminating manuscript
Boxed in bronze lay UNDER PORPHYRY
Beneath the deepest excavations. He
Would help us find it, but we must please make haste
Because Tiberius wanted it destroyed.
Oh? And where, we wondered of the void,
Was Tiberius these days? STAGE THREE

Why was he telling us? He’d overheard us
Talking to SIMPSON Simpson? His LINK WITH EARTH
His REPRESENTATIVE A feeble nature
All but bestial, given to violent
Short lives––one ending lately among flames
In an Army warehouse. Slated for rebirth
But not in time, said Ephraim, to prevent
The brat from wasting, just now at our cup,
Precious long distance minutes––don’t hang up!

So much facetiousness––well, we were young
And these were matters of life and death–dismayed us.
Was he a devil? His reply MY POOR
INNOCENTS left the issue hanging fire.
As it flowed on, his stream-of-consciousness
Deepened. There was a buried room, a BED
WROUGHT IN SILVER I CAN LEAD U THERE
IF If? U GIVE ME What? HA HA YR SOULS
(Another time he’ll say that he misread
Our innocence for insolence that night,
And meant to scare us.) Our eyes met. What if . . .
The blood’s least vessel hoisted jet-black sails.
Five whole minutes we were frightened stiff
––But after all, we weren’t that innocent.
The Rover Boys at thirty, still red-blooded
Enough not to pass up an armchair revel
And pure enough at heart to beat the devil,
Entered the spirit, so to speak,
And said they’d leave for Capri that same week.

Pause. Then, as though we’d passed a test,
Ephraim’s whole manner changed. He brushed aside
Tiberius and settled to the task
Of answering, like an experienced guide,
Those questions we had lacked the wit to ask.

Here on Earth––huge tracts of information
Have gone into these capsules flavorless
And rhymed for easy swallowing––on Earth
We’re each the REPRESENTATIVE of a PATRON
––Are there that many patrons? YES O YES
These secular guardian angels fume and fuss
For what must seem eternity over us.
It is forbidden them to INTERVENE
Save, as it were, in the entr'acte between
One incarnation and another. Back
To school for the disastrously long vac
Goes the soul its patron crams yet once
Again with savoir vivre. Will the dunce
Never––by rote, the hundredth time round––learn
What ropes make fast that point of no return,
A footing on the lowest of NINE STAGES
Among the curates and the minor mages?
Patrons at last ourselves, an upward notch
Our old ones move THEYVE BORN IT ALL FOR THIS
And take delivery from the Abyss
Of brand-new little savage souls to watch.
One difference: with every rise in station
Comes a degree of PEACE FROM REPRESENTATION
––Odd phrase, more like a motto for abstract
Art––or for Autocracy––In fact
Our heads are spinning––From the East a light––
BUT U ARE TIRED MES CHERS SWEET DREAMS TOMORROW NIGHT