Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology (36 page)
Read Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology Online
Authors: Paula Deitz
Aft er all, we’re just pawns!
And someone plays with all of us.
Who? Th
e kind gods? Or the evil?
In the eye of the peephole—
An eye. Clanging down the red
Corridor. A latch thrown up.
A drag on cheap tobacco.
Spit, we’ve lived our lives, you know, spit
.
. . . Th
ese checkered pavements are
A direct route: to the ditch
And to blood. Th
e secret eye:
Th
e moon’s hearing eye . . .
And casting one sidelong glance:
—
How far away you already lie!
10
One mutual
Wince—Our café!
Our island, our chapel,
Where in the mornings we—
Lowlives! Transitory couple!—
Celebrated our matins.
Smell of the market, of something gone sour,
Of drowsiness, of spring . . .
Here the coff ee was vile,—
Like burnt oats!
M a r i na T s v eta e va
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(Th
e spirit of good horses
Is broken with oats!)
Not a bit Arabian—
Th
at coff ee stank of
Arcadia . . .
But how she smiled on us,
Sitting us down beside her,
Worldly and compassionate,—
As a grey-haired mistress
With her doting smile:
Carpe diem! Carpe
. . . Smiling
On our madness, our poverty,
Our yawning and love,—
And, above all, upon—our youth!
Our giggling—without provocation,
Our laughter—without malice,
Our faces—without lines,—
O, above all, upon—our youth!
Our passions unfi t for this climate!
Blown in from somewhere,
Surged in from somewhere
Into this lackluster café:
—Burnous and Tunis!—
On our hopes and our muscles,
Under our threadbare robes . . .
(My dear, I’m not complaining:
Scar upon scar!)
O, how she saw us off , our
Proprietress in her stiff cap
Of Dutch linen . . .
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Ru s s i a n
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Not quite remembering, not quite understanding,
As if led away from a festival . . .
—
Our street!—No longer ours . . .
—
—
How many times we walked it . . . —but no longer we . . . —
—
Tomorrow let the sun rise in the West!
—
David break with Jehovah!
—
What are we doing?—Separating
.
—A word that has no meaning to me,
A supremely senseless word:
—
Sep—arating.—Am I just one of a hundred?
Just some word of four syllables,
Beyond which emptiness lies.
Stop! In Serbian, in Croatian,
Really, is it just the Bohemian cropping up in us?
Sep—arating. To separate
. . .
A supremely supernatural Babel!
A sound to burst the eardrums,
To test the limits of anguish . . .
Separation
—is not a Russian word!
Or a woman’s! Or a man’s!
Or a god’s word! What are we—sheep,
To gape as we eat?
Separation
—what language is that?
Th
ere’s no meaning in it,
No sound of it! Well, maybe an empty
Noise—a saw perhaps, through drowsiness.
Separation
—is just Khlebnikov’s school
Of nightingales groaning,
Of swans . . .
How did it come to this?
M a r i na T s v eta e va
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A dammed-up lake gone dry—
Air! Th
e sound of hand clapping hand.
Separation
—it’s thunder
Over my head . . . An ocean fl ooding our cabin!
Off our most distant promontory, off our farthest cape!
Th
ese streets—are too steep:
To separate—aft er all, means to descend,
Down the hill . . . Two leaden feet,
A sigh . . . A palm, fi nally, and a nail!
An overwhelming argument:
To separate—is to go separately,
We—who have grown together . . .
11
To lose everything at a stroke—
Nothing is cleaner!
Beyond town, the outskirts:
An end to our days.
To our legs (read—to stones),
To our days, our homes, and to us.
Abandoned summer homes! Like mothers
Grown old—just so, do I revere them.
It is, aft er all, something—to stand vacant:
Nothing hollow can stand vacant.
(Summer homes, standing half vacant,
Better you were to burn down!)
Just don’t cringe,
Re-opening the wound.
Beyond town, beyond town,
Breaking the sutures!
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For—with no superfl uous words,
No magnifi cent word—love is a line of sutures.
Sutures, and not a sling, sutures—and not a shield.
—
O, don’t beg me for protection!
—
Sutures, with which the dead are sewn in for burial,
With which I am sewn to you.
(Time will tell how strong a seam:
Single or triple stitched!)
One way or another, my friend,—our seams
Would go! To shreds and tatters!
Our only glory is the seam burst open:
By itself, didn’t just unravel!
Under the basting—living tissue,
Red, and not rotted!
O, he loses nothing—
Who bursts a seam!
Beyond town, the outskirts:
Our foreheads separate.
On the outskirts they are executing people
Today—wind blowing through brain matter!
O, he loses nothing who departs
At an hour when dawn catches fi re—
I’ve sewn a whole life for you through the night,
A fair copy, with no loose ends.
So don’t upbraid me now, if it’s crooked.
Th
e outskirts: stitches ripped out.
Untidy souls—
Marked by scars! . . .
M a r i na T s v eta e va
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Beyond town, the outskirts . . .
Th
e ravine with its descending sweep
Of outskirts. With the boot of fate,
Hear it?—across the watery clay?
. . . Consider my quick hand,
My friend, and the living thread,
Th
e live, clinging thread—no matter how you pick at it!
Th
e la—st lamppost!
Here? A conspiratorial—
Look. Th
e lowest form of human—
Look.—
Shall we go back up the hill?
A la—st time!
12
Like a heavy mane
Across our eyes: rain.—Hills.
We’ve passed the outskirts.
We are beyond town.
Th
is place doesn’t belong to us!
Any more than a stepmother is mother!
No further. Here
We will lie down and die.
A fi eld. A fence.
As brother and sister.
A life—in the outskirts.—
Build here, beyond town!
Ahh, it’s a played-out
Business—gentlemen!
Everywhere—outskirts!
Where are the villages?!
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Let the rain tear and rage.
We stand and part,
Th
ese three months,
First time we are two!
Did God seek a loan
Of Job, as well?
Th
is isn’t working out.
We’re beyond town now!
Beyond town! Do you get it? Out of it!
Outside! We’ve crossed a divide!
Life is a place no one can live:
A Jew—ish ghetto— . . .
Wouldn’t it be a hundred times more
Worthy to be a Wandering Jew?
Since for anyone who is not vile,
Life is a Jew—ish pogrom,—
Life. Only converts survive!
Judases of every faith!
On to the leper colonies!
On to hell!—beyond the Pale!—not back into
Life,—where only converts survive, only
Sheep—go to slaughter!
Underfoot, I trample
My perm—it to live here!
Into the ground! As my revenge, on David’s
Shield!—Joining the heaps of bodies!
Isn’t it fascinating the Jew
Had no wish—to live?!
Ghetto of God’s chosen! A divide
And a ditch: Ex—pect no mercy!
M a r i na T s v eta e va
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In this most Christian of worlds
All poets—are Jews!
13
Knives sharpened on stone,
Sawdust swept
With a broom. Under my hands
It is furry and wet.
Where are you, twin male
Virtues: hardness and dryness?
Under my palm—
Tears, and not rain!
What greater temptation—is there?
Th
an to make land—turn to water!
When your hard and glittering eyes
Stream under my palm,—
Th
ere’s no greater loss
For me. An end to the end!
I stroke—I stroke—
I stroke your face.
Such is the arrogance of Marinas,
Like me,—of we Polishwomen.
Aft er your eagle eyes
Stream under my palm . . .
You’re crying? My friend!
Now I have it all! Forgive me!
O, how big and salty
In my cupped hand!
A man’s tears are brutal:
Like an ax striking a forehead!
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Cry, with someone later you will
Make up for the shame lost on me.
Out of—the same sea—
We are fi sh! A fl ourish:
. . . Like an empty shell
Lips upon lips.
In your tears
I taste—
Wormwood.
—And tomorrow,
When
I wake up?
14
Down our steep path—
Downhill. Th
e noises of town.
We meet three streetwalkers.
Laughing. At your tears,
Laughing—high and
Low—both—billowing!
Laughing!
—at your inappropriate,
Shameful, male
Tears, visible
Th
rough the rain—like two scars!
Like a pearl—shameful
On the bronze of a warrior.
Your fi rst tears, and
Your last—O, let them fall!—
Your tears—are pearls
In my crown!
M a r i na T s v eta e va
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I don’t avert my eyes,
I stare—through the downpour.
Go on, you toys of Venus,
Stare! Th
is union of ours
Is more than your attraction,
Your going to bed.
Th
e very Song of Solomon
Gives way to us,
Infamous birds that we are,
Solomon yields to us,
—Crying together is better
Th
an fooling ourselves!
So, into the hollow waves
Of darkness—stooping and equal,—
Traceless—and speechless—we go
Down, like a sinking ship.
Mary Jane White, 2009
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Sergei Essenin
(1895–1925)
“I am the last poet of the villages”
I am the last poet of the villages
the plank bridge lift s a plain song
I stand at a farewell service
birches swinging leaves like censers
Th
e golden fl ame will burn down
in the candle of waxen fl esh
and the moon a wooden clock
will caw caw my midnight
On the track in the blue fi eld
soon the iron guest will appear
his black hand will seize
oats that the dawn sowed
In a lifeless and alien grip
my poems will die too
only nodding oats
will mourn for their old master
Th
e wind will take up their neighing
they will all dance in the morning
soon the moon a wooden clock
will caw caw my midnight
“Wind whistles through the steep fence”
Wind whistles through the steep fence
hides in the grass
a drunk and a thief
I’ll end my days
the light sinking in red hills
shows me the path
Se rg e i E s se n i n
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I’m not the only one on it
not the only one
plowed Russia stretches away
grass and then snow
no matter what part I’d come from
our cross is the same
I believe in my secret hour
as in ikons not painted by hands
like a tramp who sleeps back of a fence
