С огромной благодарностью Sibelan Forrester

за щедрую помощь с переводом и редактуру (оригинал в первом комментарии).

British Museum

No land, no water, no country, no bread,
The wandering fire’s faded out.
The wind treads the sky, no one’s to command,
To Halicarnassus, once proud.

What’s not washed away by war, is licked off by loess:
The ships, the poems, the tilt of a head -
And crawling over the rockslides and slopes
The deaf time of grass takes their stead.

But the sand’s dried up while we’re still alive,
So, before the countdown has begun,
Artemisia’s ships, sailing eye-to-eye,
Once again take to the sounds,

The lights are aflame on dunes and strands,
The seas are our shields, as before,
And we’ll all meet again where Nineveh still stands –
In Bloomsbury, before the War.