Written by
Alexander Pushkin |
In lakeside leafy groves, a friar
Escaped all worries; there he passed
His summer days in constant prayer,
Deep studies and eternal fast.
Already with a humble shovel
The elder dug himself a grave -
As, calling saints to bless his hovel,
Death - nothing other - did he crave.
So once, upon a falling night, he
Was bowing by his wilted shack
With meekest prayer to the Almighty.
The grove was turning slowly black;
Above the lake a mist was lifting;
Through milky clouds across the sky
The ruddy moon was softly drifting,
When water drew the friar's eye...
He's looking puzzled, full of trouble,
Of fear he cannot quite explain,
He sees the waves begin to bubble
And suddenly grow calm again.
Then -- white as first snow in the highlands,
Light-footed as nocturnal shade,
There comes ashore, and sits in silence
Upon the bank, a naked maid.
She eyes the monk and brushes gently
Her hair, and water off her arms.
He shakes with fear and looks intently
At her, and at her lovely charms.
With eager hand she waves and beckons,
Nods quickly, smiles as from afar
And shoots, within two flashing seconds,
Into still water like a star.
The glum old man slept not an instant;
All day, not even once he prayed:
Before his eyes still hung and glistened
The wondrous, the relentless shade...
The grove puts on its gown of nightfall;
The moon walks on the cloudy floor;
And there's the maiden - pale, delightful,
Reclining on the spellbound shore.
She looks at him, her hair she brushes,
Blows airy kisses, gestures wild,
Plays with the waves - caresses, splashes -
Now laughs, now whimpers like a child,
Moans tenderly, calls louder, louder...
"Come, monk, come, monk! To me, to me!.."
Then - disappears in limpid water,
And all is silent instantly...
On the third day the zealous hermit
Was sitting by the shore, in love,
Awaiting the delightful mermaid,
As shade was covering the grove...
Dark ceded to the sun's emergence;
Our monk had wholly disappeared -
Before a crowd of local urchins,
While fishing, found his hoary beard.
Translated by: Genia Gurarie, summer of 1995
Copyright retained by Genia Gurarie.
email: egurarie@princeton.edu
http://www.princeton.edu/~egurarie/
For permission to reproduce, write personally to the translator.
|
Written by
Alexander Pushkin |
A flower - shrivelled, bare of fragrance,
Forgotten on a page - I see,
And instantly my soul awakens,
Filled with an aimless reverie:
When did it bloom? the last spring? earlier?
How long? Where was it plucked? By whom?
By foreign hands? or by familiar?
And why put here, as in a tomb?
To mark a tender meeting by it?
A parting with a precious one?
Or just a walk, alone and quiet,
In forests' shade? in meadows' sun?
Is she alive? Is he still with her?
Where is their haven at this hour?
Or did they both already wither,
Like this unfathomable flower?
Translated by: Genia Gurarie, summer of 1995
Copyright retained by Genia Gurarie.
email: egurarie@princeton.edu
http://www.princeton.edu/~egurarie/
For permission to reproduce, write personally to the translator.
|
Written by
Alexander Pushkin |
Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
On and on our coach advances,
Little bell goes din-din-din...
Round are vast, unknown expanses;
Terror, terror is within.
-- Faster, coachman! "Can't, sir, sorry:
Horses, sir, are nearly dead.
I am blinded, all is blurry,
All snowed up; can't see ahead.
Sir, I tell you on the level:
We have strayed, we've lost the trail.
What can WE do, when a devil
Drives us, whirls us round the vale?
"There, look, there he's playing, jolly!
Huffing, puffing in my course;
There, you see, into the gully
Pushing the hysteric horse;
Now in front of me his figure
Looms up as a ***** mile-mark --
Coming closer, growing bigger,
Sparking, melting in the dark."
Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
We can't whirl so any longer!
Suddenly, the bell has ceased,
Horses halted... -- Hey, what's wrong there?
"Who can tell! -- a stump? a beast?.."
Blizzard's raging, blizzard's crying,
Horses panting, seized by fear;
Far away his shape is flying;
Still in haze the eyeballs glare;
Horses pull us back in motion,
Little bell goes din-din-din...
I behold a strange commotion:
Evil spirits gather in --
Sundry, ugly devils, whirling
In the moonlight's milky haze:
Swaying, flittering and swirling
Like the leaves in autumn days...
What a crowd! Where are they carried?
What's the plaintive song I hear?
Is a goblin being buried,
Or a sorceress married there?
Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
Swarms of devils come to rally,
Hurtle in the boundless height;
Howling fills the whitening valley,
Plaintive screeching rends my heart...
Translated by Genia Gurarie July 29, 1995.
Copyright retained by Genia Gurarie.
email: egurarie@princeton.edu
http://www.princeton.edu/~egurarie/
For permission to reproduce, write personally to the translator.
|
Written by
Hayden Carruth |
"Form follows function follows form . . . , etc."
--Dr. J. Anthony Wadlington
Here I am writing my first villanelle
At seventy-two, and feeling old and tired--
"Hey, Pops, why dontcha give us the old death knell?"--
And writing it what's more on the rim of hell
In blazing Arizona when all I desired
Was north and solitude and not a villanelle,
Working from memory and not remembering well
How many stanzas and in what order, wired
On Mexican coffee, seeing the death knell
Of sun's salvos upon these hills that yell
Bloody murder silently to the much admired
Dead-blue sky. One wonders if a villanelle
Can do the job. Granted, old men now must tell
Our young world how these bigots and these retired
Bankers of Arizona are ringing the death knell
For everyone, how ideologies compel
Children to violence. Artifice acquired
For its own sake is war. Frail villanelle,
Have you this power? And must Igo and sell
Myself? "Wow," they say, and "cool"--this hired
Old poetry guy with his spaced-out death knell.
Ah, far from home and God knows not much fired
By thoughts of when he thought he was inspired,
He writes by writing what he must. Death knell
Is what he's found in his first villanelle.
Credit: Copyright © 1995 by Hayden Carruth. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org
|
Written by
Dale Harcombe |
This time I know
I will never see him again.
For a time he played the game,
like a child experimenting with blocks,
building towers and fortresses
but never bridges.
Bridges are hard.
Invariably his feet would slip,
before he found
the acceptance parents had denied
and other children refused him.
Acceptance he couldn't recognise
even when it came, like waves
gentling in his life.
Institutions, foster homes,
he knew them all.
Fourteen going on ninety.
Knowledge gleamed in his eyes.
Though he has since been
swept out of reach,
particles of sand cling and
memories are water-cold companions.
*first published Westerly Autumn 1995
|
Written by
Hayden Carruth |
Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and
rearing.
One can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-
renewing field of corpse-flesh.
In this valley the snow falls silently all day and out our window
We see the curtain of it shifting and folding, hiding us away in
our little house,
We see earth smoothened and beautified, made like a fantasy, the
snow-clad trees
So graceful in a dream of peace. In our new bed, which is big
enough to seem like the north pasture almost
With our two cats, Cooker and Smudgins, lying undisturbed in
the southeastern and southwestern corners,
We lie loving and warm, looking out from time to time.
"Snowbound," we say. We speak of the poet
Who lived with his young housekeeper long ago in the
mountains of the western province, the kingdom
Of complete cruelty, where heads fell like wilted flowers and
snow fell for many months across the mouth
Of the pass and drifted deep in the vale. In our kitchen the
maple-fire murmurs
In our stove. We eat cheese and new-made bread and jumbo
Spanish olives
That have been steeped in our special brine of jalapeños and
garlic and dill and thyme.
We have a nip or two from the small inexpensive cognac that
makes us smile and sigh.
For a while we close the immense index of images
which is
Our lives--for instance, the child on the Mescalero reservation
in New Mexico in 1966
Sitting naked in the dirt outside his family's hut of tin and
cardboard,
Covered with sores, unable to speak. But of course the child is
here with us now,
We cannot close the index. How will we survive? We don't and
cannot know.
Beyond the horizon a great unceasing noise is undeniable. The
machine
May break through and come lurching into our valley at any
moment, at any moment.
Cheers, baby. Here's to us. See how the curtain of snow wavers
and falls back.
Credit: Copyright © 1995 by Hayden Carruth. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org
|
Written by
Odysseus Elytis |
Heleni
Translated by Daphne on May 17th, 1995
By the first drop of rain the summer died
The words that had bore those stary nights got wet
All those words that had one sole destination You!
Where will our hands reach now that weather no longer cares for us
Where will our eyes rest now that the distant lines got dispersed in the clouds
Now that your eyes have shut above the landscapes that were ours
And now that we found ourselves - as if the mist went right through us-
totally lonely surrounded by your inanimate images
With the forehead against the window we wait upon the new torment
It 's not Death that will make us fall since You are alive
Since a wind exists somewhere and he will live you entirely
To dress you from the near like our hope will from afar
Since there is elsewhere
A greenest meadow far from your laughter up to the sun
Telling him secretely that we will one day meet again
No, it is not death we shall confront
But just a tiny drop of the autumn rain
A blurry feeling
The scent of the moist soil within our souls
that are continuously diverging.
And if your hand is not between our hands
And if our blood wont' run within your dream's veins
The music unseen within us and O sorrowful
Wanderer of whatever still keeps us alive
It is the humid air the come of autumn the depart
The elbow's bitter support upon the memory
that comes out when night arrives to divorce us from the light
Behind the square window that looks upon the sadness
That sees nothing
Because it has become music unseen fire a strike of the big clock on the wall
Because it has become
A poem a verse upon a verse, a sound resembling tears and words
Words not like the rest of them but with the same destination: You!
|
Written by
Maria Mazziotti Gillan |
Panic in your face, you write questions
to ask him. When he arrives,
you are serene, your fear
unbetrayed. How unlike me you are.
After the dance,
I see your happiness; he holds
your hand. Though you barely speak,
your body pulses messages I can read
all too well. He kisses you goodnight,
his body moving toward yours, and yours
responding. I am frightened, guard my
tongue for fear my mother will pop out
of my mouth. "He is not shy," I say. You giggle,
a little girl again, but you tell me he
kissed you on the dance floor. "Once?"
I ask. "No, a lot."
We ride through rain-shining 1 a.m.
streets. I bite back words which long
to be said, knowing I must not shatter your
moment, fragile as a spun-glass bird,
you, the moment, poised on the edge of
flight, and I, on the ground, afraid.
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Copyright © 1995
|
Written by
Omer Tarin |
Once before I've heard this
anguished cry
A long-drawn note of many-lettered woe,
The great open beak straining
against the roar of raging surf;
Head, thrown back, taut
against the distant sails
Anger flickering in eyes flecked with amber,
rolling in lonely knowledge,
this bond servant of the sea,
tied by its giant wingspan
to the torturous flight of sainthood
Martyred
in its terrible existence
murdered
by the yellow fog of banality
Victim
to the squalor of urban beachfronts ,
snuffed out in the face of its own metaphor
screaming curses unto heaven,
proud to the very last;
''Once before'', I said,
''I've heard this cry''.
(from ''Burnt Offerings'', 1996)
|
Written by
Omer Tarin |
I consecrate you
Twin-horned Ram
to ritual glory;
You may celebrate
your consecration
before the butcher comes
to cut your throat.
(from ''The Anvil of Dreams'', 1995)
|