Natalya Gorbanevskaya: The Poems
This, from the diagnosis “The children’s fate doesn’t bother her.” This, from the diagnosis, It’s good when the breathing in the next room It’s good not to feel the brain’s convolutions –
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Leaves, something in my ear you twitter | |
Leaves, something in my ear you twitter which existed, no more do, and behind which I kept a keen knife, in case of love. | |
Translated by Daniel Weissbort | |
Who cries above me | |
Why speak of trouble, or beauty
when the happy body, forgetful,
naked as the thief’s upon the cross,
itself wants to be deceived.
Who weeps, who cries above me,
crossing the frontier of snow,
where the wintry wind, the icy wind,
chills the bright waters of a spring.
And in this unearthly merging of passions,
this parting of hands, this rarefied breath,
is the cross, the muffled breaking of bones,
and at the stake the crackle and the blaze.
Что о беде да что о красоте,
когда само обмана захотело
нагое, как разбойник на кресте,
счастливое, беспамятное тело.
Кто плачет и курлычет надо мной,
перелетая снежную границу,
где ветер зимний, ветер ледяной
выстуживает светлую криницу.
И в неземной сведенности страстей,
в разлуке рук, в разреженном дыханье,
как на кресте, и тихий хруст костей,
как на костре и треск, и полыханье.
Roasting over a slow fire
'Don't touch me!' I scream at passers-by –
they do not even notice me.
Cursing the rooms of other people,
I hang about their anterooms.
But who will knock a window through?
Who will hold out his hand to me?
I am roasting over a slow fire.
Translated from the Russian by Daniel Weissbort
Unfinished poem
Already past midnight, and every
other street lamp burns.
Wander about the town until
the sun appears at dawn.
Night has erased the year, the age
from the buildings' facades.
The town is bleak as a kitchen garden,
but the town is like the ark –
floating, floating, now it sails
into dawn's bitterness,
and between the windows, at the gates,
the age, the date appears,
and on the bridge over the river,
you return to yourself, weeping ...
Translated from the Russian by Daniel Weissbort
Unfinished poem
Already past midnight, and every
other street lamp burns.
Wander about the town until
the sun appears at dawn.
Night has erased the year, the age
from the buildings' facades.
The town is bleak as a kitchen garden,
but the town is like the ark –
floating, floating, now it sails
into dawn's bitterness,
and between the windows, at the gates,
the age, the date appears,
and on the bridge over the river,
you return to yourself, weeping ...
Translated from the Russian by Daniel Weissbort
