Translation of Poem by Joseph Brodsky, "Август," AUGUST

Joseph Brodsky

(1940-1996)

Август

Маленькие города, где вам не скажут правду.
Да и зачем вам она, ведь всё равно — вчера.
Вязы шуршат за окном, поддакивая ландшафту,
известному только поезду. Где-то гудит пчела.

Сделав себе карьеру из перепутья, витязь
сам теперь светофор; плюс, впереди — река,
и разница между зеркалом, в которое вы глядитесь,
и теми, кто вас не помнит, тоже невелика.

 

Запертые в жару, ставни увиты сплетнею
или просто плющом, чтоб не попасть впросак.
Загорелый подросток, выбежавший в переднюю,
у вас отбирает будущее, стоя в одних трусах.

Поэтому долго смеркается. Вечер обычно отлит
в форму вокзальной площади, со статуей и т. п.,
где взгляд, в котором читается «Будь ты проклят»,
прямо пропорционален отсутствующей толпе.

 1996

d

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 August

The small towns where the truth

you won’t be told.

But why do you need truth,

when all is now of yesterday?

Outside the window rustling elms,

concurring in a landscape bold

known only to the trains; a bee

somewhere is buzzing in dismay.

The knight-errant discovered a career

composed of taking forks in distant pathways;

but now he’s made himself into

a traffic light, plus which,

there’s a river up ahead, and the

difference between the malaise

of your reflection in a mirror

and those who misconstrue you

amounts to but a twitch.

Locked tight in searing heat,

the shutters are wreathed in scuttlebutt,

or is it simply ivy,

to camouflage their asininity?

A suntanned kid,

dressed in drawers and tight crew cut,

comes rushing into anteroom,

to take away

your future expeditiously.

 

That’s why the dark is so slow coming on;

the evening is usually depicted bereft,

in the shape of a railway station square,

with statute and so on, etc.,

where the look that you get,

which reads, “Go get effed,”

is directly proportional

to the crowd that’s not there.

 

d

 

Translator’s Note

 

This poem is not distinctive or noteworthy, except for being, apparently, the last poem Brodsky wrote in his lifetime. I can’t really make much of the imagery, can’t tell you even vaguely what the poem is “about.” Most likely, it’s about nothing in particular. I wonder why in January he wrote a poem titled “August.” And I wonder if the suntanned adolescent, wearing only underpants, who comes and “takes away your future,” is the image of Death, on its way to take Joseph Brodsky—who lived out not even one complete month in the year the poem is dated, 1996. But since I’m far from an expert on Brodsky, I should probably leave interpretation of this poem to those who know his works much better than I do.

 On a personal note: Joseph Brodsky and I were born only a month apart, he on May 24, 1940, and I on June 25, 1940. I find it astonishing that I have now outlived him by almost thirty years. I used to wonder why his health seemed to be so bad, even when he was still a young man. Then it dawned on me that he was a child born directly into the horrendous Leningrad Siege of WW II, and he probably lived his first few years seriously malnourished.

 I met Brodsky only once in my life, when I was a young professor teaching Russian language, literature, and culture at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio. Cannot remember the exact date, but I think this would have been the spring of 1973. Brodsky had been expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972. The Russian professor (University of Michigan) and publicist Carl Proffer took him under his wing, and at the time of his visit to Oxford, he was living in Ann Arbor. We had invited him to make a talk at our university, and he and Proffer drove down to Ohio together. 

 Someone had arranged a reception for Brodsky, to which a variety of Miami professors were invited to meet him. The reception, including food and drink, took place in a beautiful outdoor setting in late spring, at the home of English prof Bill Pratt. I was among the only three or four Russian-speaking profs to attend. When I arrived at the reception, Proffer and Brodsky were already there, but things were not going well. Proffer stood and made small talk at the table with all the food, but Brodsky—who clearly did not wish to be there and had zero interest in meeting Miami profs—wandered alone in the distance, at the edge of the woods. He was obviously in a state of very bad nerves.

 When he finally came back to where we all awaited him, several of us who could speak Russian approached him. He did not much care to be approached. I ended up in a very brief conversation with him, which consisted of three words spoken by me and one word in reply by him. Not really knowing how to begin I introduced myself, saying, “Я переводчик Бунина (I’m a translator of Bunin).” He answered this statement—which apparently irritated him mightily—with one loud and highly sarcastic word, “Поздравляю! (Congratulations!).” So ended my conversation with Brodsky the one time I met him.

 Someone may ask me some time, “Have you ever had a conversation with a Russian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in which a different winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (also, incidentally, a Russian) was mentioned? My answer will be, “Yes, indeed, I did once have exactly such a conversation.” If someone asks, “Have you ever, by any chance, been congratulated by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature,” I can honestly answer, “Yes, I was once congratulated by a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.” But since no one is aware of what interesting answers I have to those questions, no one will ever ask me.