"SPITTLEBUG, SKUNKADUNK, WUNK," from Bobby Goosey's Nonsense Verse

                                                                   

Spittlebug, Skunkadunk, Wunk

Not a pacifier

Finer

Will whimpers

Assuage;

They’re still firm and

Suckable

On into old age.

                                            Poster/Advert  by Aleksandr Rodchenko:

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"Sama Seeker in the Time of the End Times" Novel by U.R. Bowie

Now available for purchase in two volumes, a spy novel: Sama Seeker in the Time of the End Times: Reminiscences of a Life in the Spook Trade, While in Search of Osama bin Laden

The year is 2002, the devastating attack of 911 in New York still reverberates. Osama bin Laden is in hiding. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says, “If he’s alive, he’s somewhere?” The U.S. government marshals all its forces to find and kill him. Urell L. Buies, Ph.D., a college professor with a sideline of decades in low-level intelligence operations, is recruited to work with Russian intelligence in Central Asia. The Russians promise they can find Osama. While in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, doing little more than waiting for something to happen, Buies begins writing a long account of his years as a double agent. Or what he terms, ironically, “a double non-agent.” As the story of his life moves closer to present time, the narrative moves to the climactic point: the day the Russian helicopter goes in after Osama.


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BEET ROOT, RUTABAGA from Bobby Goosey's Nonsense Verse

Translation of poem by ANNA AKHMATOVA, "Все расхищено, предано, продано," "Everything's plundered, betrayed . . ."

Akhmatova Portrait by Yuri Annenkov, 1921

Анна Ахматова

(1889-1966)

Все расхищено, предано, продано,
Черной смерти мелькало крыло,
Все голодной тоскою изглодано,
Отчего же нам стало светло?

Днем дыханьями веет вишневыми
Небывалый под городом лес,
Ночью блещет созвездьями... новыми
Глубь прозрачных июльских небес, –

И так близко подходит чудесное
К развалившимся грязным домам,
Никому, никому неизвестное,
Но от века желанное нам.
                                                                      1921

                                   Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

Everything’s plundered, betrayed, in ruin’s jaws,

The black wing of death flicks and gleams;

A hungry sick anguish at bowels and guts gnaws,

And yet here we are dreaming our dreams?

By daylight the woods near the outskirts of town

Breathe out an astringent and cherry-laced smell,

By night there are skies of July’s eiderdown,

Grown brilliant with starlight that darkness can’t quell.

And so near comes that something of wonder

To our derelict, sullied and filthy abodes,

We’ve been craving forever its recondite umbra,

But what is it? Where is it bound? No one knows.  

Mandelstam and Akhmatova, 1934

Translation of Poem by ANNA AKHMATOVA, "Мы не умеем прощаться" "We Don't Know How to Say Good-bye"

                                                                               1915

Anna Akhmatova

(1889-1966)

Мы не умеем прощаться,-

Всё бродим плечо к плечу.

Уже начинает смеркаться,

Ты задумчив, а я молчу.

В церковь войдем, увидим

Отпеванье, крестины, брак,

Не взглянув друг на друга, выйдем...

Отчего всё у нас не так?

Или сядем на снег примятый

На кладбище, легко вздохнем,

И ты палкой чертишь палаты,

Где мы будем всегда вдвоем.

March, 1917. St. Petersburg

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

We don’t know how to say good-bye.

Together we roam in disquietude.

Twilight grows deeper, we can’t see the sky,

I hold my piece, while you ruminate, brood.

We go in a church, there’s a funeral, another,  

People are married, a baby is christened.

We walk back outside, we don’t look at each other,

What’s happened, what’s left us so stricken?

Or we seat ourselves right on the trampled-down snow,

In a graveyard we sit there and sigh,

With a stick you trace out a grand palace sans woe,

Where we’ll live on together and never say die.

                                                      Max Ernst, "La Fuite," 1940

Declamation of the poem (anon.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWm6_f-rXvk

"Withershins" Poem from Bobby Goosey's Nonsense Verse

WITHERSHINS: против движения солнца, против часовой стрелки (дурная примета)