Wednesday poem

"The night, the pharmacy, the street..." 

 

The night, the pharmacy, the street,
The pointless lamp post in the mist.
A quarter century recedes –
There’s no escape. It all persists.

You’ll die – and you’ll begin anew,
As in the past, all will repeat:
The icy channel flowing through,
The lamp, the pharmacy, the street.

-- Alexander Blok (1912)
 translated by Andrei Kneller

"Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека..."

Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,
Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.
Живи еще хоть четверть века—
Все будет так. Исхода нет.

Умрешь—начнешь опять сначала
И повторится все, как встарь:
Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,
Аптека, улица, фонарь.





Alexander Blok (1880 - 1921) was one of Russia's leading Symbolist poets.

Wednesday poem

Child

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose name you meditate —
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical
Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.


Sylvia Plath (1932 - 1963)

Wednesday poem

Traveling through the dark

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason--
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--
then pushed her over the edge into the river.


William Stafford (1914-1993)

Wednesday Poem

Wislawa Szymborska (1923 - 2012)

The End and the Beginning

 

After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.

 

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

 

Someone has to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.

 

Someone has to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone has to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

 

No sound bites, no photo opportunities,
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

 

The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirtsleeves will be rolled
to shreds.

 

Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.

 

But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who'll find all that
a little boring.

 

From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.

 

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.

 

Someone has to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at clouds.

 

 

 

Wislawa Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist and translator, and the recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. She lived most of her life in Krakow, Poland. She died in February 2012.

Wednesday poem

E. E. Cummings (1894 - 1962)

 

In The Rain-

 

in the rain-
darkness,     the sunset
being sheathed i sit and
think of you

the holy
city which is your face
your little cheeks the streets
of smiles

your eyes half-
thrush
half-angel and your drowsy
lips where float flowers of kiss

and
there is the sweet shy pirouette
your hair
and then

your dancesong
soul.     rarely-beloved
a single star is
uttered,and i

think
       of you

 

 

New Russian poets

While looking for contemporary female Russian writers to include in the Summer 2013 issue of Chtenia, which I'll be guest-curating in June, I came across one of the best poets I've read in a while: Polina Barskova. Originally from St. Petersburg, she lives and works in the United States, as a professor of Russian literature at Hampshire College.

She calls St. Petersburg "the home that I have left, the home that is absolutely impossible to leave." I like that a lot. It's how I feel about Moscow. She also studied abroad in Prague as a graduate student at Berkeley (she talks about her experience here). I like that too, for reasons everyone who knows me, knows.

Barskova has been publishing poetry since she was nine, and is acknowledged as one of the best contemporary Russian poet under the age of 40. Many of her works appear in English translation, but the best, in my opinion, remain untapped by the English audience. I hope to change that just a little with the upcoming issue.

For now, I'll share a video of Barskova reading a Russian poem by Vsevolod Zelchenko, another young(ish) poet of incredible talent. It's called "Ballada," or "Ballad," and in it the astute listener will hear allusions to many of my favorite works: to Bob Dylan's winding songs, to T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and even the first line of Nabokov's autobiography.

Just listening to her read the poem is an experience in itself. She's not merely reading the words; she's savoring them out loud. I'm starting to think that the best way to learn how to read poetry is to listen to another poet do it.

Wednesday poem

In loving memory of my father (9.11.1958 - 6.15.2012) and my grandfather (2.07.1934 - 12.11.2012).

The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes, or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down on a couch or in a field,
drugged, perhaps, by the hum of a long afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them

which makes them lift their oars, and fall silent,
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.

Billy Collins

translation takeoffs

The latest literary roundup from the Prague-based blog Literalab mentions my friend and mentor, Julia Sherwood, for her recent publication in Two Lines: Passageways, a literary translation journal produced by the Center for the Art of Translation. This past spring, during a cozy and gracious dinner with Julia and her husband, Peter Sherwood--a Hungarian translator and a fascinating man, who happened to be my professor that semester--I was introduced to the magical world of translation, and have been more or less stuck there, blissfully, ever since.

I'm happy for Julia for the recognition of her latest work, a translated excerpt from Slovak writer Ján Rozner’s novel, Seven Days to the Funeral (although I'd be even happier if it were available online!). And my mind is now abuzz with the idea of preparing one or two things of my own to submit to Two Lines, or polishing up some projects I've already started. Oh my goodness. As a favorite author wrote, my little cup brims with tiddles.

Literalab also notes the fantastic Russian poetry translations that made it into the annual Two Lines print publication. I'm sharing one of these poems, with its Russian original, here; a delicate piece by Arseny Tarkovsky, father of the legendary director.

The translators have taken liberty with some of the images and individuals phrases, but have preserved the overall wonder expressed in the poem, using nearly identical rhyme. But the Russian original is still more magical. In the last line, stars are falling onto the poet's sleeve.

Visit Two Lines Online for a treasure-trove of other recently published translations.

I learned the grass as I began to write . . .

By Arseny Tarkovsky

Translated by Philip Metres; Dimitri Psurtsev

I learned the grass as I began to write,
And the grass started whistling like a flute.
I gathered how color and sound could join
And when the dragonfly whirred up his hymn,
Passing through green frets like a comet, I knew
A tear was waiting in each drop of dew.
Knew that in each facet of the huge eye,
In each rainbow of brightly churring wings,
Dwells the burning word of the prophet—
By some miracle I found Adam’s secret.

I loved my tormenting task, this intricate
Placing of words, fastened by their light,
Riddle of vague feeling and a simple answer
To the mind. In “truth” I thought truth appeared.
My tongue was true, like a spectral analysis,
And words gathered around my feet to listen.

What’s more, my friend, you’re right to say
I heard one-quarter the noise, saw half the light,
But I did not debase the grasses, or family,
Or insult the ancestral earth by being blithe,
And as long as I worked on earth, accepted
A gift of coldest spring water and fragrant bread,
Above me unfathomable sky still stood,
And stars tumbled around my head.

_____________________________________

 Я учился траве, раскрывая тетрадь...

          Я учился траве, раскрывая тетрадь,
          И трава начинала, как флейта, звучать.
          Я ловил соответствие звука и цвета,
          И когда запевала свой гимн стрекоза,
          Меж зеленых ладов проходя, как комета,
          Я-то знал, что любая росинка - слеза.
          Знал, что в каждой фасетке огромного ока,
          В каждой радуге яркострекочущих крыл
          Обитает горящее слово пророка,
          И Адамову тайну я чудом открыл.

          Я любил свой мучительный труд, эту кладку
          Слов, скрепленных их собственным светом, загадку
          Смутных чувств и простую разгадку ума,
          В слове п р а в д а мне виделась правда сама,
          Был язык мой правдив, как спектральный анализ,
          А слова у меня под ногами валялись.

          И еще я скажу: собеседник мой прав,
          В четверть шума я слышал, в полсвета я видел,
          Но зато не унизив ни близких, ни трав,
          Равнодушием отчей земли не обидел,
          И пока на земле я работал, приняв
          Дар студеной воды и пахучего хлеба,
          Надо мною стояло бездонное небо,
          Звезды падали мне на рукав.