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Winter Sunset At The Diner
addressed to Marina Tsvetaeva
Where's Paris now
or the Soviet judge and jury
the witnesses.
Sandomirsky's brave daughter,
through the queues of railway builders
jostling for lunch it's only you
I can still see.
We left at sunset
walked the alleys, yards, churches
behind the Moskva,
ignored cold December -
your thin mackintosh
was as skewed as Myshkin's cloak
as you gave me old news
of Merezhkovsky and Balmont,
nineteen to the dozen
in your Muscovite accent.
We ignored the frost,
you raised your eyebrows
to silence questions.
Elabuga and that Tartar rope
were a long way away.
Translated by Yvonne Green
Path
I walked alone
unheard
along a strange
star-lit path.
Then I reached a border
where maples rose far ahead
and starlings chattered
in a foreign language.
I was listening to the birds
and watched the maples
But as morning came
I saw we were all corpses.
In that morning the strange
star-lit road I'd walked along
began to seem unreal
and life and death unknowable.
1999
Translated by Olga Selivanova and Yvonne Green
Dead friend of my own age
Enveloped in anguish,
depressed, unworded
paper unlooked for.
Maybe we'll meet soon
and it'll be better than this hell
where the gates have no bolts,
but I'm still here - won't leave.
The years have extended and extended
each with the weight of our guilt.
we were different before God
in our guilt.
He was an atheist, I am believer
he beamed, I sparkled.
Heaps of letters crossed
between us by kind fate.
My surroundings are uninhabited
my journey is mindless
my breathe is stifled
my bread is the bread of affliction
1998
Translated by Olga Selivanova and Yvonne Green
Souls Yet Naked Of Flesh
Ashen dust yet ungrassed
skies blueless
water and land undivided
light, yet blind before darkness
the word was unutterable
the other was asleep in the before-storm silence
alive's warmth was unknown to death
but I already loved you.
Pain has understood my courage
light has learned to see
hard earth cut from the water
is dressed in grass
souls now wear flesh
thought has woken up, seen,
become the word, the measure of all existing things
and time passes by in the distance
1972
Translated by Mariya Petrova and Yvonne Green
In Sarajevo
The mosque in Sarajevo
where the clock hands show Muslim time,
Turkic birds sing Slav songs,
God calls a tribe a place
where angels are unhappy
in different heavens,
the youthful smile of a Bosnian monk,
the sad face of a Sephardi in his tarbush,
the seraph smell of spikenard from distant Avsonia
cloth, dialects, markets, yards, breathe with a nation
everywhere there are Babylons, the last fires of Babel
isn't this a two legged world of tribes united in their differences?
In a narrow street I read a footstep commemorated
and realize the terrible principle of our century.
I heard your foosteps, your bullet, Gavrio Princip,
when you shot at Archduke Franz Ferdinand
it reached the tundra and the taiga
your blood fuelled the crusade of the Black Shirts in Rome,
named the Marxist split, held back Stalin's word
and the roar of Munich's beer houses
brought the notion of leaders to life,
a shamanistic ritual of a priest —
a replacement of a vision.
In Sarajevo I suffered,
felt how we became racial — tribal,
sacrificed community.
Night always scares me,
especially in a town away from Russia.
There were so many police cars, round every corner.
Shouting closed in like steady thunder
the student protest cut in and out
of the uneven crowd in the square,
they were diseased not empowered
by their rebellion and suddenly
I felt lonely and bitter
1968
Note:
Avsonia — the ancient name given to Italy by Virgil and Ovid
Translated by Yvonne Green
Neither War Nor Its Sentries Relented
They sealed us in 'til May that year,
Spring failed twice and used a detour
to get to us the third time.
The moon rose slowly,
shivered in the grey nights,
Taurus and Gemini flickered like beads of mercury.
The days were thick with mist,
like the blurred eyes of rabid dogs.
Three times the rivers hid under the ice,
the moon in darkness.
1941
Translated by Sergei Makarov and Yvonne Green
These translations will appear in After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin 1911-2003 which will be published in England by Smith/Doorstop in October 2011.
"Path" first appeared in Poetry Review Number 98:4
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