[Note from U.R. Bowie: I am reposting what I consider the best of my translations of Russian poetry]
(1880-1921)
Ты помнишь? В нашей бухте сонной
Спала зеленая вода,
Когда кильватерной колонной
Вошли военные суда.
Четыре — серых. И
вопросы
Нас волновали битый час,
И загорелые матросы
Ходили важно мимо нас.
И вдруг — суда уплыли прочь.
Нам было видно: все четыре
Зарылись в океан и в ночь.
И вновь обычным
стало море,
Маяк уныло замигал,
Кoгда на низком семафоре
Последний отдали сигнал...
Нам, детям, — и тебе и мне.
Ведь сердце радоваться радо
И самой малой новизне.
Найди пылинку дальних стран -
И мир опять предстанет странным,
Закутанным в цветной туман!
1911/1914
Do you remember? In our drowsy bay
The green water was sleeping,
When, in line, one after another,
The warships came sailing in.
We were all stirred up with questions,
While the suntanned sailors,
Full of themselves, went strutting past us.
And then suddenly the ships sailed away.
We watched them, all four of them
As they burrowed into the ocean and the night.
The lighthouse began blinking mournfully
As the last signal was received
From the low semaphore.
We children, you and I.
The heart so gladly finds joy
In the very slightest novelty.
By chance on the blade of a penknife,
And once more the world will manifest itself
As strange, wrapped in technicolored haze!
Lay slumbering in deepest sleep,
When, one by one, the gray quartet
Of warships came in splendrous sweep.
And our brains teemed with fascination,
While suntanned sailors at midday
Went strutting past us, smug, complacent.
Then suddenly those ships weighed anchor,
We watched as all four sailed—appalled—
Dissolved in ocean’s murk and languor.
The lighthouse blinked its flickers dismal,
Grasping one last flash profane
From semaphore on seas abysmal.
We children, you and I and all.
The least fresh news sets us afire,
How easy fond hearts to enthrall.
We spy a speck from distant lands,
And our world coruscates with new life,
Wrapped up in rainbow-tinted bands!
d
Translator’s Note
This poem is dated “1911—Feb. 6, 1914.
Aber’ Wrach, Finistêre” (both name of the village and province spelled slightly
wrong). According to a note in a one-volume collection of Blok’s poetry, in
August of 1911 Blok and his wife Lyubov were staying in the French village and
port of Aber Wrac’h, Finistère (correct spelling), located on the coast of
Brittany. They witnessed a squadron of French naval ships that sailed into the
port. The political situation in Europe was tense at that time, and Blok saw
this event as an omen of the ever-imminent world war (Aleksandr Blok, Izbrannye
proizvedenija, Lenizdat, 1970, p. 563).
Even if the above information is
correct (about the omen and Blok’s misgivings), no such misgivings are
expressed in the poem that commemorates this event. Blok converts the
witnesses, himself and his wife, into curious children (“We children, you and
I”) and writes of how the simplest of things—such as the arrival of the military
squadron in the port and watching the French sailors as they come ashore and
swagger about—can make for sparks of joy in the imagination of a child.
