TOMAS TRASTROMER & MANDELTAM & OTHERS

In Damascus:

             the traveler sings to himself:

                   I return from Syria

                       neither alive

                            nor dead

                                 but as clouds

                                      that ease the butterfly's burden

                                                       from my fugitive soul

 

 

 

  TRISTIA

 

There is, I know, a science of separation

In night's disheveled elegies, stifled laments,

The clockwork oxen jaws, the tense anticipation

As the city's vigil nears its sun and end.

I honor the natural ritual of the rooster's cry,

The moment when, red-eyed from weeping, sleepless

Once again, someone hoists the journey's burden,

And to weep and to sing become the same quicksilver verb.

 

But who can prophesy in the word good-bye

The abyss of loss into which we fall;

Or what, when the dawn fires burn in the Acropolis,

The rooster's rusty clamor means for us;

Or why, when some new life floods the cut sky,

And the barn-warm oxen slowly eat each instant,

The rooster, harbinger of the one true life,

Beats his blazing wings on the city wall?

 

I love the calm and custom of quick fingers weaving,

The shuttle's buzz and hum, the spindle's bees.

And look—arriving or leaving, spun from down,

Some barefoot Delia barely touching the ground . . .

What rot has reached the very root of us

That we should have no language for our praise?

What is, was; what was, will be again; and our whole

Sweetness lies in these meetings that wen recognize.

 

Soothsayer, truth-sayer, morning's mortal girl,

Lose your gaze again in the melting   wax

That whitens and tightens like the stretched pelt of a

   squirrel

And find the fates that will in time find us.

In clashes of bronze, flashes of consciousness,

Men live, called and pulled by a world of shades.

But women—all fluent spirit; piercing, pliable eye—

Wax toward one existence, and divining   they die.

 

(1918)

 

TRISTIA

 

Il existe, je sais, une science de la séparation

Dans les élégies échevelées de la nuit, les lamentations étouffées,

Les mâchoires des bœufs mécaniques, l'attente tendue

Alors que la veillée de la ville approche de son soleil et de sa fin.

J'honore le rituel naturel du cri du coq,

Le moment où, les yeux rouges à force de pleurer, je ne dors pas

Une fois de plus, quelqu'un soulève le fardeau du voyage,

Et pleurer et chanter deviennent le même verbe vif-argent.

 

Mais qui peut prophétiser avec le mot au revoir

L'abîme de perte dans lequel nous tombons ;

Ou quoi, quand les feux de l'aube brûlent sur l'Acropole,

La clameur rouillée du coq signifie pour nous ;

Ou pourquoi, quand une nouvelle vie inonde le ciel coupé,

Et les bœufs chauds dans l'étable mangent lentement à chaque instant,

Le coq, signe avant-coureur de la seule vraie vie,

Battre ses ailes flamboyantes sur les remparts de la ville ?

 

J'aime le calme et la coutume du tissage rapide des doigts,

Le bourdonnement de la navette, les abeilles du fuseau.

Et regardez, arrivant ou partant, filé du bas,

Une Delia pieds nus touchant à peine le sol. . .

Quelle pourriture a atteint nos racines

Que nous ne devrions pas avoir de langage pour nos louanges ?

Ce qui est, était ; ce qui était, sera à nouveau ; et notre tout

La douceur réside dans ces rencontres que l'on se reconnaît.

 

Devin, devin, mortelle du matin,

Perdez à nouveau votre regard dans la cire fondante

Qui blanchit et se resserre comme la peau tendue d'un

   Écureuil

Et trouvez les destins qui nous trouveront avec le temps.

Dans des heurts de bronze, des éclairs de conscience,

Les hommes vivent, appelés et tirés par un monde d’ombres.

Mais les femmes — toutes ont un esprit fluide ; œil perçant et souple—

Cire vers une seule existence, et devinant ils meurent.

 

(1918)

 

 

 

 

Devin, devin, mortelle du matin,

Perdez à nouveau votre regard dans la cire fondante

Qui blanchit et se resserre comme la peau tendue d'un

   écureuil

Et trouvez les destins qui nous trouveront avec le temps.

Dans des heurts de bronze, des éclairs de conscience,

Les hommes vivent, appelés et tirés par un monde d’ombres.

Mais les femmes — toutes ont un esprit fluide ; œil perçant et souple—

Cire vers une seule existence, et devinant ils meurent.

 

(1918)

 

TRISTIA

 

Tôi biết có một khoa học về sự tách biệt

Trong đêm thanh lịch nhếch nhác, những lời than thở nghẹn ngào,

Hàm bò theo kim đồng hồ, sự chờ đợi căng thẳng

Khi buổi cầu nguyện của thành phố sắp đến gần và kết thúc.

Tôi tôn vinh nghi thức tự nhiên của tiếng gà trống kêu,

Khoảnh khắc mắt đỏ hoe vì khóc, mất ngủ

Một lần nữa, có người nâng gánh nặng cuộc hành trình,

Và khóc và hát trở thành cùng một động từ thủy ngân.

 

Nhưng ai có thể nói tiên tri bằng lời từ biệt

Vực thẳm mất mát mà chúng ta rơi vào;

Hay sao, khi bình minh rực cháy ở Acropolis,

Tiếng kêu rỉ sét của con gà trống có ý nghĩa đối với chúng ta;

Hoặc tại sao, khi sự sống mới nào đó tràn ngập bầu trời cắt xén,

Còn bò ấm chuồng từ từ ăn từng miếng,

Con gà trống, điềm báo của một cuộc sống đích thực,

Đập đôi cánh rực lửa của mình trên tường thành?

 

Tôi yêu sự yên tĩnh và thói quen dệt ngón tay nhanh chóng,

Tiếng vo ve của tàu con thoi, tiếng ong của trục quay.

Và nhìn xem—đến hay đi, quay từ dưới xuống,

Một số Delia chân trần gần như không chạm đất. . .

Cái thối nát nào đã chạm tới tận gốc rễ của chúng ta

Rằng chúng ta không có ngôn ngữ để khen ngợi?

Cái gì đã là; những gì đã có, sẽ lại có; và toàn bộ của chúng tôi

Sự ngọt ngào nằm trong những cuộc gặp gỡ mà chúng ta nhận ra.

 

Người xoa dịu, người nói sự thật, cô gái phàm trần của buổi sáng,

Lại đánh mất ánh nhìn của bạn trong lớp sáp tan chảy

Nó trắng lên và săn chắc như tấm da căng ra của một con thú

    con sóc

Và tìm ra số phận sẽ tìm thấy chúng ta theo thời gian.

Trong những cuộc đụng độ bằng đồng, những tia sáng của ý thức,

Đàn ông sống, được kêu gọi và lôi kéo bởi một thế giới bóng tối.

Nhưng đàn bà - tất cả đều có tinh thần trôi chảy; con mắt xuyên thấu, mềm mại—

Wax hướng tới một sự tồn tại, và bói toán họ chết.

 

(1918)

 

Tristia: Sorrow

 

 

 

 

 Leningrad

 

I've returned to my city, it's familiar in truth

To the tears, to the veins, swollen glands of my youth.

You are  here once again, — quickly gulp in a trance

The fish oil of Leningrad's riverside lamps.

Recognize this December   day from afar,

Where  an  egg yolk is mixed with the sinister tar.

I'm not willing yet, Petersburg, to perish in slumber:

It is you who retains all my telephone numbers.

I have plenty of addresses, Petersburg, yet,

Where  I'm certain to find the voice of the dead.

In the dark of the staircase, my temple is threshed

By  the knocker ripped out along with the flesh.

All night long, I await my dear guests like before

As  I shuffle the shackles of the chains on the door.

1930

Léningrad

Je suis retourné dans ma ville, c'est familier en vérité

Aux larmes, aux veines, aux ganglions gonflés de ma jeunesse.

Vous êtes là une fois de plus, — avalez rapidement en transe

L'huile de poisson des lampes au bord de la rivière de Léningrad.

Reconnaître de loin ce jour de décembre,

Où un jaune d’œuf se mêle au sinistre goudron.

Je ne veux pas encore, Pétersbourg, périr dans le sommeil :

C'est vous qui conservez tous mes numéros de téléphone.

J'ai encore plein d'adresses, à Saint-Pétersbourg,

Où je suis sûr de trouver la voix des morts.

Dans le noir de l'escalier, ma tempe est battue

Par le heurtoir arraché avec la chair.

Toute la nuit, j'attends mes chers invités comme avant

Pendant que je mélange les chaînes des chaînes sur la porte.

1930

Leningrad

Tôi đã trở lại thành phố của mình, nó thực sự quen thuộc

Đến những giọt nước mắt, đến những mạch máu, những tuyến sưng tấy của tuổi trẻ tôi.

Bạn lại ở đây một lần nữa, - nhanh chóng nuốt nước bọt trong trạng thái thôi miên

Dầu cá của những ngọn đèn ven sông ở Leningrad.

Nhận ra ngày tháng mười hai này từ xa,

Nơi mà lòng đỏ trứng được trộn với hắc ín.

Petersburg, tôi chưa sẵn sàng chết trong giấc ngủ:

Chính bạn là người giữ lại tất cả số điện thoại của tôi.

Tôi có rất nhiều địa chỉ, Petersburg,

Nơi tôi chắc chắn sẽ tìm thấy tiếng nói của người chết.

Trong bóng tối của cầu thang, ngôi đền của tôi bị đập nát

Bởi tiếng gõ cửa xé ra cùng với thịt.

Suốt đêm dài đợi khách thân thương như xưa

Khi tôi xáo trộn cùm xích trên cửa.

1930

 

 

Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938)

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was born in Warsaw to a Polish Jewish family; his father was a leather merchant, his mother a piano teacher. Soon after Osip’s birth the family moved to St Petersburg. After attending the prestigious Tenishev School, Mandelstam studied for a year in Paris at the Sorbonne, and then for a year in Germany at the University of Heidelberg. In 1911, wanting to enter St Petersburg University — which had a quota on Jews — he converted to Christianity; like many others who converted during these years, he chose Methodism rather than Orthodoxy.

Under the leadership of Nikolay Gumilyov, Mandelstam and several other young poets formed a movement known first as the Poets' Guild and then as the Acmeists. Mandelstam wrote a manifesto, 'The Morning of Acmeism’ (written in 1913, but published only in 1919). Like Ezra Pound and the Imagists, the Acmeists valued clarity, concision and craftsmanship.

In 1913 Mandelstam published his first collection, “Stone”. This includes several poems about architecture, which would remain one of his central themes. A poem about the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris ends with the declaration:

Fortress Notre-Dame, the more attentively

I studied your stupendous ribcage,

the more I kept repeating: in time I too

will craft beauty from sullen weight.

In its acknowledgement of earthly gravity and its homage to the anonymous masons of the past, the poem is typically Acmeist.

Mandelstam was also a great love poet. Several women — each an important figure in her own right — were crucial to his life and work. An affair with Marina Tsvetaeva inspired many of his poems about Moscow. His friendship with Anna Akhmatova helped him withstand the persecution he suffered during the 1930s. He had intense affairs with the singer Olga Vaksel and the poet Maria Petrovykh. Most important of all was Nadezhda Khazina, whom he married in 1922.

Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam moved to Moscow soon after this. Mandelstam's second book, “Tristia”, published later in 1922, contains his most eloquent poetry; the tone is similar to that of Yeats's 'Sailing to Byzantium' or some of Pound's first “Cantos”. Several poems were inspired by the Crimea, where Mandelstam had stayed as a guest of Maximilian Voloshin. Once a Greek colony, the Crimea was for Mandelstam a link to the classical world he loved; above all, it granted him a sense of kinship with Ovid, who had also lived by the Black Sea. It was while exiled to what is now Romania that Ovid had composed his own “Tristia”.

The final section of Mandelstam's 1928 volume “Poems” (the last collection he was able to publish in his life) is titled 'Poems 1921-25'. These twenty poems differ from any of his previous work. Many are unrhymed, and they are composed in lines and stanzas of varying length. This formal disintegration reflects a sense of crisis that Mandelstam expresses most clearly in 'The Age':

Buds will swell just as in the past,

sprouts of green will spurt and rage,

but your backbone has been smashed,

my grand and pitiful age.

And so, with a meaningless smile,

you glance back, cruel and weak,

like a beast once quick and agile,

at the prints of your own feet.

 

 

 

For several years from 1925 Mandelstam abandoned poetry — or, as he saw it, was abandoned by poetry. Alienated from himself and the world around him, he supported himself by translating. He also wrote memoirs, literary criticism and experimental prose.

What helped Mandelstam to recover was a journey to Armenia from May to November 1930. The self-doubt of 'Poems 1921-25' yields to an almost joyful acceptance of tragedy. Armenia's importance to Mandelstam is not surprising: it is a country of stone, and one of the arts in which Armenians have long excelled is architecture. And to Mandelstam, Armenia represented the Hellenistic and Christian world where he felt his roots lay; there are ruins of Hellenistic temples not far from Yerevan and it was on Mount Ararat — which dominates the city's skyline — that Noah's Ark is believed to have come to rest. Mandelstam drew strength from a world that felt more solid, and more honest, than the Russia where he had become an outcast.

In the autumn of 1933 Mandelstam composed an epigram about Stalin, then read it aloud at several small gatherings in Moscow. It ends:

Horseshoe-heavy, he hurls his decrees low and high:

in the groin, in the forehead, the eyebrow, the eye.

Executions are what he likes best.

Broad is the highlander's chest.

(trans. Alexandra Berlina)

Six months later Mandelstam was arrested. Instead of being shot, he was exiled to the northern Urals; the probable reason for this relative leniency is that Stalin, concerned about his own place in the history of Russian literature, took a personal interest in Mandelstam's case. After Mandelstam attempted suicide, his sentence was commuted to banishment from Russia's largest cities. Mandelstam and his wife settled in Voronezh. There, sensing he did not have long to live, Mandelstam wrote the poems that make up the three “Voronezh Notebooks”. Dense with wordplay yet intensely lyrical, these are hard to translate. A leitmotif of the second notebook is the syllable `os'. This means either 'axis' or 'of wasps' — and it is the first syllable of both Mandelstam’s and Stalin's first names ('Osip' and `Iosif are, to a Russian ear, just different spellings of a single name). In the hope of saving his own life, Mandelstam was then composing an Ode to Stalin; he evidently imagined an axis connecting himself — the great poet — and Stalin — the great leader.

In May 1938 Mandelstam was arrested a second time and sentenced to five years in the Gulag. He died in a transit camp near Vladivostok on 27 December 1938. His widow Nadezhda preserved most of his unpublished work and also wrote two memoirs, published in English as “Hope Against Hope” and “Hope Abandoned”.

Cautious, toneless sound

of fruit from a tree

to the constant

melody of forest silence . . .

(1908)

John Riley

*

From the dimly lit hall

you slipped out in a light shawl.

The servants slept on,

we disturbed no one . . .

(1908)

James Greene

*

To read only children's tales

and look through a child's eye;

to rise from grief and wave

big things goodbye.

Life has tired me to death;

life has no more to offer.

But I love my poor earth

since I know no other.

I swung in a faraway garden

on a plain plank swing;

I remember tall dark firs

in a feverish blur.

(1908)

Robert Chandler

Newly reaped ears of early wheat

lie in level rows;

fingertips tremble, pressed against

fingers fragile as themselves.

(1909)

James Greene

“Silentium”

She has yet to be born:

she is music and word,

and she eternally bonds

all life in this world.

The sea breathes gently;

the day glitters wildly.

A bowl of dazed azure

sways pale foam-lilac.

May I too reach back

to that ancient silence,

like a note of crystal

pure from its source.

Stay, Aphrodite, as foam.

Return, word, to music.

Heart, be shy of heart,

fused with life's root.

(1910)

Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk

No, not the moon — the bright face of a clock

glimmers to me. How is it my fault

that I perceive the feeble stars as milky?

And I hate Batyushkov’s unbounded arrogance:

What time is it? someone simply asked —

and he replied to them: “eternity”!

(1912)

Boris Dralyuk

“The Admiralty”

A dusty poplar in the northern capital,

a transparent clock face lost in the leaves;

and, shining through this green — a brother

to both sky and water — a frigate, an acropolis.

Aerial craft, touch-me-not mast, straight edge

repeating to Peter's heirs this golden rule:

beauty is no demi-god's caprice

but a plain carpenter’s rule, his raptor's eye.

Four elements rule over us benignly;

free man is able to create a fifth.

Doesn't this ark, this chastely crafted ark

deny the sovereignty of space?

Angry and whimsical, the jellyfish cling on;

anchors lie rusting like discarded ploughs —

we cast away the chains of Euclid's space

and the world's seas open before us.

(1913)

Robert Chandler

Dombey and Son

The shrillness of the English language

and Oliver's dejected look

have merged: I see the youngster languish

among a pile of office books.

Charles Dickens — ask him; he will tell you

what was in London long ago:

the city, Dombey, assets' value,

the River Thames's rusty flow.

'Mid rain and tears and counted money,

Paul Dombey's curly-headed son

cannot believe that clerks are funny

and laughs at neither joke nor pun.

The office chairs are sorry splinters;

each broken farthing put to use,

and numbers swarm in springs and winters,

like bees perniciously let loose.

Attorneys study every letter;

in smoke and stench they hone their stings,

and, from a noose, the luckless debtor —

a piece of bast — in silence swings.

His foes enjoy their lawful robbing,

lost are for him all earthly boons,

and lo! His only daughter, sobbing,

embraces checkered pantaloons.

(1913)

Anatoly Libermann

“Concerning the chorus in Euripides”

The shuffling elders: a shambles

of sheep, an abject throng!

I uncoil like a snake,

my heart an ancient ache

of dark Judaic wrong.

But it will not be long

before I shake off sadness,

like a boy, in the evening,

shaking sand from his sandals.

(1914)

James Greene

On the black square of the Kremlin

the air is drunk with mutiny.

A shaky 'peace' is rocked by rebels,

the poplars puff seditiously.

The wax faces of the cathedrals

and the dense forest of the bells

tell us — inside the stony rafters

a tongueless brigand is concealed.

But inside the sealed-up cathedrals

the air we breathe is cool and dark,

as though a Russian wine is coursing

through Greece’s earthenware jars.

Assumption's paradise of arches

soars up in an astonished curve;

and now the green Annunciation

awakens, cooing like a dove.

The Archangel and Resurrection

let in the light like glowing palms —

everything is secretly burning,

the jugs are full of hidden flames.

(1916)

Thomas de Waal

“Solominka”

I.

When you lie there, Salome, in your vast

room, when you can't sleep, when you lie and wait

for the tall ceiling to descend, to brush

your delicate eyelids with its grave weight; […]

when you can’t sleep, things seem to gain in weight

or else are lost — the silence is so full;

white pillows glimmer palely in the glass;

the bed is mirrored in a circling pool;

and pale blue ice is streaming through the air.

Salome, broken straw, you sipped at death,

drank all of death, and only grew sweeter.

December now streams out her solemn breath.

Twelve moons are singing of the hour of death,

the room is gone, the Neva takes its place,

Ligeia, winter herself, flows through my blood,

and I have learned to hear you, words of grace.

2..

Lenore, Solominka, Ligeia, Seraphita.

The heavy Neva fills the spacious room.

Salome, my beloved straw, Solominka,

poisoned by pity, slowly sips her doom.

And pale blue blood runs streaming from the stone.

From all I see only a river will remain.

Twelve moons are singing of the hour of death.

And Salome will never dance this dance again.

(1916)

Robert Chandler

The thread of golden honey flowed from the bottle

so heavy and slow that our hostess had time to declare:

Here in melancholy Tauris, where fate has brought us,

we are not bored at all — and glanced back over her shoulder.

On all sides the rites of Bacchus, as if the world

held only watchmen and dogs, not a soul to be seen —

the days roll peacefully by like heavy barrels:

away in the hut are voices, you can't hear or reply.

We drank tea, then went out to the huge brown garden,

dark blinds were down like lashes over the eyes,

we walked past the white columns to look at the vineyard

where the somnolent hills are coated in airy glass.

I said: The vines are alive like ancient battles,

where curly horsemen are fighting in curving order,

in stony Tauris the science of Hellas lives on —

and the noble rusty array of golden acres.

And in the white room quiet stands like a spinning wheel,

smells of vinegar, paint and wine that is fresh from the cellar.

Remember, in that Greek house, the much-loved wife —

not Helen — the other wife — how long she embroidered?

Golden fleece, oh where are you now, golden fleece?

All the journey long the heavy sea waves were loud,

and leaving his ship, his sails worn out by the seas,

full of space and time, Odysseus came home.

(1917)

Peter France

Heaviness, tenderness — sisters — your marks are the same.

The wasps and the honeybees suck at the heavy rose.

Man dies, heat drains from the once warm sand,

and on a black bier they carry off yesterday's sun.

Oh, you tender nets and you heavy honeycombs,

easier to lift a stone than to speak your name!

Only one care is left to me in the world:

a care that is golden, to shed the burden of time.

I drink the mutinous air like some dark water.

Time is turned up by the plough, and the rose was earth.

Slowly they eddy, the heavy, the tender roses,

roses of heaviness, tenderness, twofold wreath.

(1920)

Peter France

Take from my palms some sun to bring you joy

and take a little honey — so the bees

of cold Persephone commanded us.

No loosing of the boat that is not moored,

no hearing of the shadow shod in fur,

no overcoming fear in life's dense wood.

And kisses are all that's left us now,

kisses as hairy as the little bees

who perish if they fly out of the hive.

They rustle in transparent depths of night,

their home dense forests on Taigetos' slopes,

their food is honeysuckle, mint and time.

So for your joy receive my savage gift,

a dry and homely necklace of dead bees

who have transmuted honey into sun.

(1920)

Peter France

*

I was washing at night out in the yard,

the heavens glowing with rough stars,

a star-beam like salt upon an axe,

the water butt cold and brim full.

A padlock makes the gate secure,

and conscience gives sternness to the earth —

hard to find a standard anywhere

purer than the truth of new-made cloth.

A star melts in the water butt like salt,

cold water in the butt is blacker still,

death is pure, disaster saltier

and earth more truthful and more terrible.

(1921, Tbilisi)

Peter France

“The Horseshoe Finder (A Pindaric Fragment)”

We look at a forest and say:

Here's a forest for ships, for masts,

rose-shadowed pines,

right to their very tops free of shaggy burdens,

they ought to creak in a windstorm,

like solitary Italian pines,

in the furious forestless air.

Beneath the wind's salt heel the plumbline holds,

set in the dancing deck,

and a seafarer,

in his insatiable thirst for space,

dragging the brittle instrument of the geometer across

sodden ruts,

collates against the pull of earthly breast

the ragged surface of seas.

But drinking the scent

of resinous tears, which show through the ship's planking,

admiring the timber,

riveted, well-jointed into bulkheads,

not by that quiet carpenter of Bethlehem, but another —

the father of voyages, the seafarer's friend —

we say:

They too once stood on land,

ungainly, like a donkey's spine,

their tops overlooking their roots,

upon the ridge of some renowned mountain,

and clattered beneath fresh cloudbursts,

suggesting vainly that the heavens exchange their noble burden

for a pinch of salt.

Where shall we start?

Everything cracks and reels.

The air shivers with similes.

One word’s no better than another,

the earth drones with metaphors,

and lightweight carts

harnessed garishly to flocks of birds dense with strain

burst to pieces,

competing with the snorting favourites of the hippodrome.

Thrice blessed, he who guides a name into song;

the song adorned with nomination

lives longer among the others —

she's marked among her friends by a fillet on her brow,

which saves her from fainting, from powerful stupefying smells,

whether it be the closeness of a man,

or the smell of fur from a powerful beast,

or merely the scent of savory, crushed between palms.

The air grows dark, like water, and all things living swim

through it like fish,

fins thrusting aside the sphere,

compact, resilient, barely warm, —

a crystal, in which wheels spin and horses shy,

damp humus of Neaira, furrowed anew each night,

by pitchforks, tridents, hoes, and ploughs.

The air is mixed as solidly as the earth:

one can't get out of it, to enter it is difficult.

A rustle runs along the trees like some green ball.

Children play at knucklebones with vertebrae of dead animals.

The fragile chronology of our era is drawing to its close.

Thanks for everything that was:

I made mistakes myself, fell astray, botched my reckoning.

The era rang, like a golden sphere,

hollow, molded, sustained by no one,

at every touch responding 'Yes' or 'No'.

It answered like a child:

'I'll give you an apple' or 'I won't give you an apple',

its face a perfect copy of the voice that speaks these words.

The sound’s still ringing, though the source of sound has

vanished.

A horse slumps in the dust and snorts in a lather,

but the sharp turn of its neck

still keeps the memory of racing forward with its out-flung

hooves —

when there weren't only four of them,

but numerous as stones upon the road,

rekindled in four shifts,

as numerous as the ground-beats of the blazing horse.

So,

the finder of a horseshoe

blows off the dust

and burnishes it with wool, until it shines.

Then

he hangs it over the threshold,

to take a rest,

so it no longer needs to strike out sparks from flint.

Human lips,

for which there's nothing more to say,

retain the form of their last-spoken word,

and weight continues tangible in the hand

although the jug,

spilled half

while carried home.

What I'm saying now, I do not say,

but has been dug from the earth, like grains of petrified wheat.

Some

portray a lion on their coins,

others —

a head.

Assorted copper, gold and bronze lozenges

lie with equal honour in the earth.

The age, which tried to gnaw them through, imprinted teeth

on them.

Time lacerates me, like a coin,

and I'm no longer ample for myself.

(1923, Moscow)

Steven J. Willett

“Armenia”

“Here labour is understood

as an awesome, six-winged bull;

and, swollen with venous blood,

pre-winter roses bloom.”

I.

You rock the rose of Hafez

and dandle your wild-beast children;

your lungs are the octahedral shoulders

of bull-like peasant churches."

Coloured in raucous ochre,

you lie far beyond the Mountain;"

here we have only a picture,

a water transfer peeled from a saucer.

2.

Oh, I can't see a thing and my poor ear's gone deaf,

and there are no colours left but red lead and this raucous ochre.

And somehow, I found myself dreaming of an Armenian

morning,

I felt like seeing how a tomtit gets by in Yerevan,

how a baker plays at blind man's buff with the bread,

stooping to scoop the moist warm hides from the oven . . .

Oh, Yerevan, Yerevan! Were you sketched by a bird?

Or did a lion colour you in, like a child with a box of crayons?

Oh, Yerevan, Yerevan! More a roast nut than a city,

how I love the Babels and Babylons of your big-mouthed streets.

I've fingered and mauled my life, like a mullah his Koran,

I have frozen my time, never spilt hot blood.

Oh, Yerevan, Yerevan! There's nothing more that I need —

I don't want your frozen grapes!

3.

You longed for a dash of colour —

so a lion who could draw

made a long paw

and snatched five or six crayons from a box."

Country of blazing dyes

and dead earthenware plains,

amid your stones and clays

you endured sultans and red-bearded sardars."

Far from anchors and tridents,

where a continent withers to rest,

you put up with those ever-so-potent

potentates who loved executions.

Simple as a child's drawing,

not stirring my blood,

your women pass by, bestowing

gifts of their graceful lionhood.

How I love your ominous tongue,

your young coffins,

where each letter's a blacksmith's tong

and each word a cramp-iron.

4.

Covering your mouth like a moist rose,

octahedral honeycombs in your hands,

all the dawn of days you stood

on a world's edge, swallowing your tears.

You turned away in shame and sorrow

from the bearded cities of the East —

and now you lie amid clays and dyes

as they take your death mask.

5.

Wrap your hand in a kerchief

and plunge it, through the celluloid thorns,

into the heart of the wreath-bearing briar.

Snap.

Who needs scissors?

But mind it doesn't just fall apart-

scraps of pink, confetti, a petal of Solomon,

a wildling without oil or scent,

no use even for sherbert.

6.

Realm of clamouring stones —

Armenia, Armenia!

summoning the raucous mountains to arms —

Armenia, Armenia!

Soaring forever towards the silver trumpets of Asia" —

Armenia, Armenia!

Lavishly flinging down the Persian coins of the sun —

Armenia, Armenia!

7.

No, not ruins but what remains of a round and mighty forest,

anchor-stumps of felled oaks from a Christianity of beasts

and fables,

capitals bearing rolls of stone cloth, like loot from a heathen

marketplace,

grapes each the size of a pigeon's egg, scrolls of eddying

rams' horns,

and ruffled eagles with the wings of owls, still undefiled by

Byzantium."

8.

The rose is cold in the snow:

which lies three fathoms deep on Sevan .

The mountain fisherman has made off with his azure sledge

and the whiskered snouts of stout trout

police the lime-covered lake bed.

While in Yerevan and Echmiadzin

the vast mountain has drunk all the air.

I need to entice it with an ocarina,

tame it with a pipe

till the snow melts in my mouth.

Snow, snow, snow on rice paper,

the mountain swims towards my lips.

I'm cold. I'm glad.. .

9.

Clip clop against purple granite,

a peasant's horse stumbles

as it mounts the bald plinth

of the realm's sovereign stone,

while some breathless Kurds run behind

with bundles of cheese wrapped in cloth —

peacemakers between God and the Devil

and backers of both.

10.

What luxury in an indigent village —

The thread-like music of the water!

What is it? Someone spinning? Fate? An omen?

Don't come too close. There's trouble on the way.

And the maze of the moist tune

conceals something dark, stifling, whirring —

as if a water nymph were paying a visit

to a subterranean watchsmith.

II.

Clay and azure. ... azure, clay . . .

What more do you want? Just squint,

like a myopic shah over a turquoise ring,

over a book of ringing clays, a bookish earth,

a festering text, a precious clay,

that hurts us like music,

like the word.

12. . .

I shall never see you again,

myopic Armenian sky;

never again screw up my eyes

at Mount Ararat’s nomad tent;

and in the library of earthenware authors

I shall never again open

the hollow volume of a splendid land

that primed the first people.

(1930, Tbilisi)

Robert Chandler

Help me, O Lord, through this night.

I fear for life, your slave.

To live in Peter's city is to sleep in a grave.

(1931)

Robert Chandler

After midnight, clean out of your hands,

the heart seizes a sliver of silence.

It lives on the quiet, it's longing to play;

like it or not, there's nothing quite like it.

Like it or not, it can never be grasped;

so why shiver, like a child off the street,

if after midnight the heart holds a feast,

silently savouring a silvery mouse?

(1931)

- Robert Chandler

Gotta keep living, though I've died twice,

and water's driving the city crazy:

how beautiful, what high cheekbones, how happy,

how sweet the fat earth to the plough,

how the steppe extends in an April upheaval,

and the sky, the sky — pure Michelangelo . . .

(1935)

Andrew Davis

Drawing the youthful Goethe to their breast,

those Roman nights took on the weight of gold.

I've much to answer for, yet still am graced;

an outlawed life has depths yet to be told.

(1935)

Robert Chandler

*

Goldfinch, friend, I'll cock my head —

let's check the world out, just me and you:

this winter's day pricks like chaff;

does it sting your eyes too?

Boat-tailed, feathers yellow-black,

sopped in colour beneath your beak,

do you get, you goldfinch you,

just how you flaunt it?

What's he thinking, little airhead? —

white and yellow, black and red!

Both eyes check both ways — both! —

will check no more — he's bolted!

(1936)

Andrew Davis

Deep in the mountain the idol rests

in sweet repose, infinite and blest,

the fat of necklaces dripping from his neck

protects his dreams of flood tide and of slack.

As a boy, he buddied with a peacock,

they gave him rainbow of India to eat

and milk in a pink clay dish,

and didn't stint the cochineal.

Bone put to bed, locked in a knot,

shoulders, arms and knees made flesh,

he smiles with his own dead-silent lips,

thinks with his bone, feels with his brow,

and struggles to recall his human countenance.

(1936)

Andrew Davis

You're not alone. You haven't died,

while you still, beggar-woman at your side,

take pleasure in the grandeur of the plain,

the gloom, the cold, the whirlwinds of snow.

In sumptuous penury, in mighty poverty

live comforted and at rest —

your days and nights are blest,

your sweet-voiced labour without sin.

Unhappy he, a shadow of himself,

whom a bark astounds and the wind mows down,

and to be pitied he, more dead than alive,

who begs handouts from a ghost.

(1937)

Andrew Davis

Where can I hide in this January?

Wide-open city with a mad death-grip . . .

Can I be drunk from sealed doors? —

I want to bellow from locks and knots . . .

And the socks of barking back roads,

and the hovels on twisted streets —

and deadbeats hurry into corners

and hurriedly dart back out again . . .

And into the pit, into the warty dark

I slide, into waterworks of ice,

and I stumble, I eat dead air,

and fevered crows exploding everywhere —

But I cry after them, shouting at

some wickerwork of frozen wood:

A reader! A councillor! A doctor!

A conversation on the spiny stair!

(1937)

Andrew Davis

Breaks in round bays, and shingle, and blue,

and a slow sail continued by a cloud —

I hardly knew you; I've been torn from you:

longer than organ fugues — the sea's bitter grasses,

fake tresses — and their long lie stinks,

my head swims with iron tenderness,

the rust gnaws bit by bit the sloping bank .. .

On what new sands does my head sink?

You, guttural Urals, broad-shouldered Volga lands,

or this dead-flat plain — here are all my rights,

and, full-lunged, gotta go on breathing them.

(1937)

Andrew Davis

Armed with wasp-vision, with the vision of wasps

that suck, suck, suck the earth's axis,

I’m filled by the whole deep vein of my life

and hold it here in my heart

and in vain.

And I don't draw, don't sing,

don't draw a black-voiced bow over strings:

I only drink, drink, drink in life and I love

to envy wasp-

waisted wasps their mighty cunning.

O if I too

could be impelled past sleep, past death,

stung by the summer’s cheer and chir,

by this new air

to hear earth's axis, axis, axis.

(1937)

Robert Chandler

I'll say this in a whisper, in draft,

because it’s early yet:

we have to pay

with experience and sweat

to learn the sky's free play.

And under purgatory’s temporal sky

we easily forget:

the dome of heaven

is a home

to praise forever, wherever.

(1937)

Robert Chandler

The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry

 

 

 

 

 

Silentium

 

  Be silent, hide away and let

  your thoughts and longings rise and set

  in the deep places of your heart.

  Let dreams move silently as stars,

  in wonder more than you can tell.

  Let them fulfil you — and be still.

 

 What heart can ever speak its mind?

  How can some other understand?

the hidden pole that turns your life?

A thought, once spoken, is a lie.

Don't cloud the water in your well;

drink from this wellspring — and be still.

 

 Live in yourself. There is a whole

 deep world of being in your soul,

burdened with mystery and thought.

The noise outside will snuff it out.

Day's clear light can break the spell.

Hear your own singing — and be still.

 

                                             (1829--early

 

Silentium: A variation on Tyutchev's earlier poem 'Silentium’

(see page 105).

Chandler