Poems

Автор

William Butler Yeats

Жанр

Зарубежная классика

Год написания книги

2017

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SHEMUS

They come to buy our souls?

TEIG

I'll barter mine.
Why should we starve for what may be but nothing?

MARY

Teig and Shemus —

SHEMUS

What can it be but nothing?
What has God poured out of His bag but famine?
Satan gives money.

TEIG

Yet no thunder stirs.

FIRST MERCHANT

There is a heap for each.

(SHEMUS goes to take money.)

But no, not yet,
For there's a work I have to set you to.

SHEMUS

So then you're as deceitful as the rest,
And all that talk of buying what's but a vapour
Is fancy bread. I might have known as much,
Because that's how the trick-o'-the-loop man talks.

FIRST MERCHANT

That's for the work, each has its separate price;
But neither price is paid till the work's done.

TEIG

The same for me.

MARY

Oh, God, why are you still?

FIRST MERCHANT

You've but to cry aloud at every cross-road,
At every house door, that we buy men's souls.
And give so good a price that all may live
In mirth and comfort till the famine's done,
Because we are Christian men.

SHEMUS

Come, let's away.

TEIG

I shall keep running till I've earned the price.

SECOND MERCHANT

(who has risen and gone towards fire)

Stop; you must have proof behind the words.
So here's your entertainment on the road.

(He throws a bag of money on the ground.)

Live as you please; our Master's generous.

(TEIG and SHEMUS have stopped. TEIG takes the money. They go out.)

MARY

Destroyers of souls, God will destroy you quickly.
You shall at last dry like dry leaves and hang
Nailed like dead vermin to the doors of God.

SECOND MERCHANT

Curse to your fill, for saints will have their dreams.

FIRST MERCHANT

Though we're but vermin that our Master sent
To overrun the world, he at the end
Shall pull apart the pale ribs of the moon
And quench the stars in the ancestral night.

MARY