Boris Pasternak

 

with brother Alexander (on right). painting by Leonid Pasternak

My desk is not so wide that I might lean

My desk is not so wide that I might lean
Against the edge and reach out past the shell
Of board and glass, beyond the isthmus in
The endless miles of my scraped out farewell.

(It's night there now.) Beyond your sultry neck.
(They went to bed.) Behind your shoulders' realm.
(Switched off the light.) At dawn, I'd give them back.
The porch would touch them with a sleepy stem.

No, not with snowflakes! With your arms! Reach far!
Oh you, ten fingers of my pain, the light
Of crystal winter stars-and every star
A sign of northbound snowbound trains being late.

Anna Akhmatova

 

There is a sacred, secret line in loving

There is a sacred, secret line in loving

which attraction and even passion cannot cross,—

even if lips draw near in awful silence

and love tears at the heart.

Friendship is weak and useless here,

and years of happiness, exalted and full of fire,

because the soul is free and does not know

the slow luxuries of sensual life.

Those who try to come near it are insane

and those who reach it are shaken by grief,

So now you know exactly why

my heart beats no faster under your hand.

(Translated by Jane Kenyon)

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Clouds up to tricks

High
       in the sky
                      sailed clouds.
Just four of them —
                                 none of your crowds.
From the first to the third
                                       they looked men,
while the fourth
                         was a camel.
                                              Then,
when they were well adrift,
they were joined
                          on the way
                                            by a fifth,
from which,
                   absolutely irrelevant,
ran elephant
                     after elephant.
Till —
       perhaps a sixth

Daniil Kharms

SYMPHONY NO. 2

Anton Mikhailovich spat, said “yuck,” spat again, said “yuck” again, spat again, said “yuck” again, and closed the door. To hell with him. Le me tell about Ilya Pavlovich.
     Ilya Pavlovich was born in 1893 in Constantinople. When he was still a small boy, his folks moved to Petersburg, he graduated from the German School on Kirchnaya Street. Then he worked in some shop; then he did some other thing; and during the Revolution, he emigrated. To Hell with him. Let me tell about Anna Ignatievna.
     Not so easy to talk about Anna Ignatievna. Firstly, I know nothing about her, and secondly, I have just fallen of my chair, and have forgotten what I was about to tell you. So let me tell you about myself.
     I am tall, not unintelligent; I dress prudently and with taste; I don’t drink, I don’t bet on horses, but I do like ladies. And ladies don’t avoid me. They smile when I go out with them. Serafima Izmaylovna has been asking me to her place, and Zinaida Yakovlevna implied she would have liked to see me. Then there is a funny business Marina Petrovna, which I would like you to consider. Quite an ordinary thing, but a funny business still. Because of me, Marina Petrovna turned completely bald – bald like a baby’s bottom. It happened like this: I went over to visit Marina Petrovna, and bang! she lost all her hair. And that was that.

TRANSLATED BY KATIE FARRIS AND ILYA KAMINSKY

Daniil Karhms

 

What Are We To Do?

While the dolphin and the sea-horse
Played silly games together,
The ocean beat against the cliffs
And washed the cliffs with its water.
The scary water moaned and cried.
The stars shone. Years went by.

Then the horrid hour came:
I am no more, and so are you,
The sea is gone, the cliffs, the mountains,
And the stars gone, too;
Only the choir sounds out of the dead void.
And for simplicity’s sake, our wrathful God
Sprung up and blew away the dust of centuries,
And now, freed from the shackles of time
He flies alone, his own and only dearest friend.
Cold everywhere, and darkness blind.

                                Translated by Matvei Yankelevich

Anna Akhmatova

Why Is This Age Worse

Why is this age worse than earlier ages?

In a stupor of grief and dread

have we not fingered the foulest wounds

and left them unhealed by our hands?

 

In the west the falling light still glows,

and the clustered housetops glitter in the sun,

but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses,

and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in.

 

                        (Translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward)

Daniil Kharms

 

SYMPHONY NO. 2

Anton Mikhailovich spat, said “yuck,” spat again, said “yuck” again, spat again, said “yuck” again, and closed the door. To hell with him. Le me tell about Ilya Pavlovich.
     Ilya Pavlovich was born in 1893 in Constantinople. When he was still a small boy, his folks moved to Petersburg, he graduated from the German School on Kirchnaya Street. Then he worked in some shop; then he did some other thing; and during the Revolution, he emigrated. To Hell with him. Let me tell about Anna Ignatievna.
     Not so easy to talk about Anna Ignatievna. Firstly, I know nothing about her, and secondly, I have just fallen of my chair, and have forgotten what I was about to tell you. So let me tell you about myself.
     I am tall, not unintelligent; I dress prudently and with taste; I don’t drink, I don’t bet on horses, but I do like ladies. And ladies don’t avoid me. They smile when I go out with them. Serafima Izmaylovna has been asking me to her place, and Zinaida Yakovlevna implied she would have liked to see me. Then there is a funny business Marina Petrovna, which I would like you to consider. Quite an ordinary thing, but a funny business still. Because of me, Marina Petrovna turned completely bald – bald like a baby’s bottom. It happened like this: I went over to visit Marina Petrovna, and bang! she lost all her hair. And that was that.

TRANSLATED BY KATIE FARRIS AND ILYA KAMINSKY

Daniil Kharms

 

What Are We To Do?

While the dolphin and the sea-horse
Played silly games together,
The ocean beat against the cliffs
And washed the cliffs with its water.
The scary water moaned and cried.
The stars shone. Years went by.

Then the horrid hour came:
I am no more, and so are you,
The sea is gone, the cliffs, the mountains,
And the stars gone, too;
Only the choir sounds out of the dead void.
And for simplicity’s sake, our wrathful God
Sprung up and blew away the dust of centuries,
And now, freed from the shackles of time
He flies alone, his own and only dearest friend.
Cold everywhere, and darkness blind.

                                Translated by Matvei Yankelevich

Daniil Kharms

 

From "A Treatise More or Less in the Spirit of Emerson"

IV. On approaching immortality

It is characteristic of every person to strive toward enjoyment, which is always a kind of sexual fulfillment, either satisfaction or acquisition. But only that which does not lie on the path of enjoyment leads to immortality. All the systems leading toward immortality, in the final analysis, are reducible to a single rule: at all times do that which you do not want to do, because every person always wants to either eat, or to satisfy their sexual urges, or to acquire something, or all of the above, more or less, at the same time. Interestingly, immortality is always connected with death, and is represented by the various religious systems either as eternal enjoyment, or eternal suffering, or an eternal absence of both pleasure and suffering.

Ilya Kutik

Fine-bearded Ilya Kutik & his wife, center, at home with his circle of friends, philologists, translators, poets & philosophy teachers, Moscow December 16, 1985. Dostoevsky-eyed youth in striped sweater had gone absent without leave for the evening from the Army to meet me and ask after Neal Cassady, Kerouac's hero On the Road., 1985

David and Orpheus

On his simple harp he sings praise to Him,
Who created us. His voice trembles from uncertainty
in himself, but not in Him, the Only, the Formidable – no escape.

Over his Apollonian lyre, having left behind the gloom
of Hades, he runs his fingers, not knowing amongst this scenery
which god to sing his song for in the present forest landscape:

of that oak? of that there pine? of that river? which to?
Again – the problems of Paris? He’ll play for any o’ youse
easily, even in the rain. But for which one ought he?

David, now, sits under a tree. From soul rupture
after the Anointing – life is like the branches
his ancestors have hung their harps on ever since captivity.

~

Harp, you are like the cheekbone
of cubism, you are like an icon-
precipice falling down,
and alongside – a saint and his mount.

Lyre, your sides
are incurved so like lips,
that Pan says to Apollo: “I
knew not of such a tulip.”