A Few Thoughts for the Christmas Season

 

                                                            Mortification of the Flesh
Whip your sinful flesh, revel in the sores that torment you, cover your body with wounds. All of this in aid of extermination of the beastly sexual impulse within you. But this is just sensuality coming in by way of the back door when the front door, the door to fornication, is locked and sealed.
 
                                                                 Seedless Jesus

Vas. Vas. Rozanov points out that Mary was, in effect, a nun, the Virgin, the woman without sex. When we speak of the Immaculate Conception we say “not of the lust of man and not of the lust of woman” came Christ the Saviour. And the new and original thing about this new God was that He was “seedless.” “For as soon as you introduce the idea of seed, the notion of ‘seed-bearing’ into His image, you cleave that image asunder.”
                                                                                          Rozanov, Four Faces
 
                                                            Jesus as Effeminate

Christ was of necessity effeminate because He had only a mother. He had no human father; the Lord God Jehovah, his actual father, is a deity and therefore has no masculinity about him. Even though he has a long white beard.
                                                                                Rozanov
 
                                Problems With Having A God for a Father
 
Since He showed up without a father Christ was accused of being a bastard.
The other kids probably taunted little Jesus at school, called him a son of a bitch. Until he waved a pinky finger at them and turned them into pillars of salt.

[excerpted from book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]

Bobby Goosey Poem: "Beading the Night"

 

Bobby Lee Goosey         

              Beading the Night
 
When Ivan went to bead a night,
At night to bead, to bead a night,
He saw the starts up in the skite,
Up in the skite, the starts so bright,
When Ivan went to bead a night.
 
As Ivan leed upon the beed,
Upon the beed, in beed he leed,
He heart the angles voices swede,
Their swede and ululating Lied,
As Ivan leed upon the beed.
 
When Ivan heart that Angel-lied,
It tested swede, like viscous mead,
And saw the starts’ celestial might,
Up in the skite, the starts so bright,
He knew the whorled was spun in deed,
The whorled was rapt in flaxen seed;
 
Swede sleep swept over Ivan Trite,
And Ivan went to bead the night.

[excerpted from the book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]

Translation of Poem by Innokenty Annensky, Иннокентий Анненский, "Сиреневая мгла," THE LILAC HAZE

 

Иннокентий Анненский
(1855-1909)

           Сиреневая мгла

Наша улица снегами залегла,
По снегам бежит сиреневая мгла.

Мимоходом только глянула в окно,
И я понял, что люблю её давно.

Я молил её, сиреневую мглу:
«Погости-побудь со мной в моём углу,

Не мою тоску ты давнюю развей,
Поделись со мной, желанная, своей!»

Но лишь издали услышал я в ответ:
«Если любишь, так и сам отыщешь след,

Где над омутом синеет тонкий лёд,
Там часочек погощу я, кончив лёт,

А у печки-то никто нас не видал…
Только те мои, кто волен да удал».

1907

d

                                                   Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                            The Lilac Haze

A snowfall clothed our street in white manteau,  
A lilac haze ran glistening through the snow.
 
She glanced in passing at my poor abode,
And I felt love my anxious heart implode.
 
I begged of her, the lilac haze bright-eyed,
“Come stay with me and by my side abide,
 
My chronic anguish you need not dispel,
Just paint your own for me in aquarelle.”
 
But from afar I heard her softly say:
“If you love then you will find the way
 
To blue of ice that glitters on a pond,
I’ll end my days there, tarry fey and fond,
 
And no one saw us speaking, you and me,  
Just friends of mine, the bold and fancy-free.”
 

Translation of Poem by Innokenty Annensky, Иннокентий Анненский, "Тоска медленных капель," THE ANGUISH OF SLOW-DRIPPING DROPS

 

Иннокентий Анненский
(1855-1909)

[From the ANGUISHING CYCLE]

Тоска медленных капель

О капли в ночной тишине,
Дремотного духа трещотка,
Дрожа набухают оне
И падают мерно и чётко.

В недвижно-бессонной ночи
Их лязга не ждать не могу я:
Фитиль одинокой свечи
Мигает и пышет, тоскуя.

И мнится, я должен, таясь,
На странном присутствовать браке,
Поняв безнадёжную связь
Двух тающих жизней во мраке.

[published posthumously]

d

                                                  Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                   The Anguish of Slow-Dripping Drops

The drops in the silence of night,
Their drip the quintessence of hebetude;
They shudder distending, contrite,
Then plink into pure quietude.    
 
Midst inert and insomniac night
I await each drip-click, ever languishing,
While the flame of a lone candle’s light
Blinks and then burgeons with anguishing.
 

And it seems I must be there concealed,
In a strange mystery-marriage complicit,
Aware of the hopeless force field
Of two lives obscurely illicit.                                                

 

Translation of Poem by Innokenty Annensky, Иннокентий Фёдорович Анненский, "МАКИ," "Poppies"

 

 Иннокентий Фёдорович Анненский 
(1856—1909)

 

                                         МАКИ

Весёлый день горит… Среди сомлевших трав
Все маки пятнами — как жадное бессилье,
Как губы, полные соблазна и отрав,
Как алых бабочек развёрнутые крылья.

Весёлый день горит… Но сад и пуст и глух.
Давно покончил он с соблазнами и пиром,—
И маки сохлые, как головы старух,
Осенены с небес сияющим потиром.

 1910?

d

 Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Poppies

The day blazes gaily . . . Amidst the grasses indolent,

In patches the poppies stand out—like dots of avid impotence,

Like poisonous lips tumescent with lechery snide, 

Like wings of scarlet butterflies spread wide.

 

The day blazes gaily . . . But the garden is empty, careworn,

With carnality done now, with fests and seductions,   

And the poppies now desiccate, hags' heads forlorn,

But bathed in the heavenly light of a world void of ructions.

 

d

 

Translation of Poem by Bella Akhmadulina, Белла Ахмадулина, "Заклинание," INVOCATION

 

Белла Ахмадулина

(1937-2010

                              Заклинание

Не плачьте обо мне — я проживу
счастливой нищей, доброй каторжанкой,
озябшею на севере южанкой,
чахоточной да злой петербуржанкой
на малярийном юге проживу.

Не плачьте обо мне — я проживу
той хромоножкой, вышедшей на паперть,
тем пьяницей, поникнувшим на скатерть,
и этим, что малюет Божью Матерь,
убогим богомазом проживу.

Не плачьте обо мне — я проживу
той грамоте наученной девчонкой,
которая в грядущести нечёткой
мои стихи, моей рыжея чёлкой,
как дура будет знать. Я проживу.

Не плачьте обо мне — я проживу
сестры помилосердней милосердной,

в военной бесшабашности предсмертной,

да под звездой моею и пресветлой

уж как-нибудь, а всё ж я проживу.

 1968

d

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

Incantation

 Don’t cry for me; I’ll find a way to live

as happy beggar, kindly convict, detainee,

as southerner who shivers

with the north-bound booboisee,

consumptive Petersburgher

and mean word-nerd fickle-free;

in southern climes malarial

I’ll find a way to live.

Don’t cry for me; I’ll find a way to live

like that gimp-leggèd scrounger

meek and wary,

like that sad lush

with red nose (lingonberry),

as one who paints (but poorly)

Mother Mary; as ikonist pathetic/bad,

I’ll find a way to live.

Don’t cry for me; I’ll find a way to live,

by grammar that I learned

but girlishly,

that functions in my future

somewhat churlishly,

that knows my poems and ginger bangs

but furtively; with that poor fool

I’ll find a way to live.

 

Don’t cry for me; I’ll find a way to live,

as sister of mercy

most merciful, gracious,

in combat near fatal

but always audacious,

and under my lucky star

pure and lustraceous.

Somehow. All the same.

I’ll find a way

to live my life.

 

Bobby Goosey, JOBS I'D LIKE TO HAVE: CEO of Impression-Producing Factory

 

 

Jobs I’d Like To Have

I’d like to open a small, economical impression-producing factory. There we would manufacture good impressions, bad impressions, deep impressions, sad impressions, and, especially—the top of the line—impressive impressions. The ultimate aim would be to please our customers, or at least to make a lasting impression on them.

Although somewhat in demand by a small New York clientele, nebulous impressions would expressly be not produced at our enterprise. Too many impression factories have gone in for that sort of thing in recent years, and although nebulous impressions seem, on the face of them, to make a sort of positive avangardist impression, they are, ultimately, empty and unimpressive.

 What will I call my factory? Well, maybe something with a certain highfalutin ring to it, like, “The Bobby Lee Goosey Enterprise for the Production of Highly Artistic Impressions.” No, that won’t work. I think I’ll just stick with “The Hoboken Impression-Producing Plant.” That should make an impression, although perhaps not too impressive an impression.

 Speaking of Hoboken. Bruce Springsteen once included a mention of my town of birth, Metuchen, NJ, in one of his songs, then proceeded to omit that verse of the song. See “Glory Days.”

[excerpted from book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]

Bobby Goosey Poem: WHY NOT A THRIP?

                                                      Western Flower Thrips (A)

Bobby Lee Goosey
 

           Why Not a Thrip?

A thrips is an insect—a thrips.
One thrips is a thrips,
Two thrips are still thrips,
And even three thrips are called thrips
(Not thripses, mind you, but thrips).
 
What a nasty and thoughtless thing to do:
To call one bug the same thing as two.
One thrips is a thrips,
Two thrips are still thrips,
And even ten thrips are called thrips
(Not thripses, mind you, but thrips).
 
It must be a hard life for thrips and a thrips
If a million and one of them still is a thrips.
One thrips is a thrips,
Two thrips are still thrips,
And even in multitudes they’re still all thrips
(Not thripses, not ever—just thrips).
Urghh.

Ant in Contemplation

Translation of Poem by Robert Rozhdestvensky, Р. Рождественский, "Человеку надо мало," NOT TOO MUCH

 

Р. Рождественский
 
Robert Rozhdestvensky
(1932-1994)
 
 
Человеку надо мало:
чтоб искал
и находил.
Чтоб имелись для начала
Друг -
один
и враг -
один...
 
Человеку надо мало:
чтоб тропинка вдаль вела.
Чтоб жила на свете
мама.
Сколько нужно ей -
жила..
 
Человеку надо мало:
после грома -
тишину.
Голубой клочок тумана.
Жизнь -
одну.
И смерть -
одну.

Утром свежую газету -
с Человечеством родство.
И всего одну планету:
Землю!
Только и всего.
 
И -
межзвездную дорогу
да мечту о скоростях.
Это, в сущности,-
немного.
Это, в общем-то,- пустяк.
Невеликая награда.
Невысокий пьедестал.

Человеку
мало
надо.
Лишь бы дома кто-то
ждал.
 
1973
 
 
d
 
                                            Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
         Not Too Much
 
What does man need?
Not too much.
He needs to seek
and needs to find.
He needs to have
for starters, this:
a friend
(one friend)
a foe
(just one) . . . 
 
What does man need?
Not too much.
A path that ranges far afield,
a momma living on this earth,
may she live on
as long as need be.
 
 
What does man need?
Not too much.
After thunder
he needs silence,
a light-blue wisp of haziness.
A life: one,
and a death: just one.
 
A morning paper he can read,
and a kinship with Humanity,
and one blue planet, only one:
Earth!
That’s all.
 
And:
an interstellar path toward the stars
and dreams of speeding
light-years
on toward Glory!
That, in essence,
is not too much,
that, in fact,
is triflingly small.
 
A negligible, teetoncey
reward for his troubles,
a pedestal pitiful,
none too tall.
 
What does man need?
Not too much.
He needs
someone
who at home
is waiting
for him.

 

Translation of Poem by Boris Pasternak, БОРИС ПАСТЕРНАК, "Памяти Марины Цветаевой," IN MEMORY OF MARINA TSVETAEVA

 

БОРИС ПАСТЕРНАК

(1890-1960)

         Памяти Марины Цветаевой
 
Хмуро тянется день непогожий.
Безутешно струятся ручьи
По крыльцу перед дверью прихожей
И в открытые окна мои.
 
За оградою вдоль по дороге
Затопляет общественный сад.
Развалившись, как звери в берлоге,
Облака в беспорядке лежат.
 
Мне в ненастьи мерещится книга
О земле и ее красоте.
Я рисую лесную шишигу
Для тебя на заглавном листе.
 
Ах, Марина, давно уже время,
Да и труд не такой уж ахти,
Твой заброшенный прах в реквиеме
Из Елабуги перенести.
 
1942/43
 
d
 
                                        Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
            In Memory of Marina Tsvetaeva
 
Somberly drags on the bad-weather day.
Rivulets stream inconsolably, soddenly
Past porch leading up to my cottage doorway;
Mist blows into my window despondency. 
 
Surging down roads like the rivers they’d rather be,
Streaming waters submerge the municipal park.
Sprawled out anyhow like some beasts in menagerie,
The clouds in the sky lie haphazard and dark.
 
Beneath storm clouds I daydream, imagine a book
For you, about God’s blessed earth ever glistening,
And a wood demon lass by a fairyland brook
I sketch on the title page, doodling and scribbling.
 
Ah, Marina, you know that it’s long past high time—
And how easy the effort, you’re light as fresh loam—
The forsaken ashes, as bells toll and chime,
To bring back from far-flung Yelabuga home.

Translator’s Note

 I’ve seen this poem published in several different variants. I translate the shortest of these here. The longer form has a second part, much lengthier. The shorter form is sometimes published with one additional stanza, but I prefer the variant that omits it. For the reader’s interest that extra final stanza is this:

 

Торжество твоего переноса
Я задумывал в прошлом году
Над снегами пустынного плеса,
Где зимуют баркасы во льду.
 
Your triumphant return to the streets of Moscow
Last year I planned out and described in
My notebook while watching the bleak fields of snow,
Where the barges spend winter days iced-in.
 

d

 Yelabuga—city on the Kama River, near Kazan, to where Marina Tsvetaeva was evacuated during WW II. There she succumbed to despair and hanged herself on Aug. 31, 1941. She was buried in the Petropavlovskoe Cemetery in Yelabuga on Sept. 2, 1941. Pasternak never realized his intention to bring her remains back home. When he wrote the above poem he apparently was unaware that the exact location of her burial place was unknown. It was never definitively established. In 1970 a granite gravestone was erected (see photograph), and in the early years of the twenty-first century this spot was declared Marina’s official gravesite. But the exact location of her remains is still undetermined.

Translation of Poem by Anna Akhmatova, Анна Ахматова, "Муза," THE MUSE

 

Анна Ахматова
(1889-1966)
 
                           Муза

Когда я ночью жду ее прихода,
Жизнь, кажется, висит на волоске.
Что почести, что юность, что свобода
Пред милой гостьей с дудочкой в руке.
 
И вот вошла. Откинув покрывало,
Внимательно взглянула на меня.
Ей говорю: «Ты ль Данту диктовала
Страницы Ада?» Отвечает: «Я».
 
1924

d

                                      Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                           The Muse

In midnight hours as I await her advent,
Life, so it seems, is hanging by a thread.
What’s youth to me, what’s freedom, fame liquescent,  
When this dear guest with reed pipe haunts my bed?
 
So in she comes; draws coverlet aside andante,
Then stares at me as I gape back besotted.
I say, “Are you the one who dictated to Dante
The pages of Inferno?” She answers me, “You got it.”
 

Translation (with Revision) of Poem by Boris Slutsky, БОРИС СЛУЦКИЙ, "ЛОШАДИ В ОКЕАНЕ," "Horsies at Sea and on Land"

 

                                                            ЛОШАДИ В ОКЕАНЕ

БОРИС СЛУЦКИЙ
(1919-1986)
 
И. Эренбургу

Лошади умеют плавать,
Но — не хорошо. Недалеко.
«Глория» — по-русски — значит «Слава», -
Это вам запомнится легко.

Шёл корабль, своим названьем гордый,
Океан стараясь превозмочь.
В трюме, добрыми мотая мордами,
Тыща лощадей топталась день и ночь.

Тыща лошадей! Подков четыре тыщи!
Счастья все ж они не принесли.
Мина кораблю пробила днище
Далеко-далёко от земли.

Люди сели в лодки, в шлюпки влезли.
Лошади поплыли просто так.
Что ж им было делать, бедным, если
Нету мест на лодках и плотах?

Плыл по океану рыжий остров.
В море в синем остров плыл гнедой.
И сперва казалось — плавать просто,
Океан казался им рекой.

Но не видно у реки той края,
На исходе лошадиных сил
Вдруг заржали кони, возражая
Тем, кто в океане их топил.

Кони шли на дно и ржали, ржали,
Все на дно покуда не пошли.
Вот и всё. А всё-таки мне жаль их —
Рыжих, не увидевших земли.

1951 г. (first published 1956)

d

Literary Translation/Adaptation/Revision by U.R. Bowie

Horsies at Sea and on Land
                                                                                 For Ilya Ehrenburg

Horsies can swim,
but not well, not too far.
 
“Glory” in Russian is “Slava;”
not hard to remember,
like “Tar” or “Polar Star”
(but this particular ship
was called GLORY).
 
A ship (this particular one)
steamed along,
proud name on its hull,
striving to conquer
the billowing waves.
 
Shaking their muzzles
most kindly and long,
clomping their hooves
to the beat of a song,
in the hold galloped (in place)
one thousand horsies.
 
A thousand, mind you!
Count up all the horseshoes:
Four thousand! Clomping away!
And not a shred of happiness
in all those clomps.
 
Far removed from the dry land they preferred,
the horsies clomped on clankily,
feeling just a little bit absurd,
when BAM and then BAM-BAM:
a big ole mine blew away
the ship’s weak undergird.
 
The crew climbed into lifeboats,
soon were off and sailing;
the horsies started swimming,
some were wailing (neighing).
 
Poor horsies, what on earth (at sea)
were they to do?
The places in the boats
were mighty few,
the horsies were,
in one French word,
beaucoup (a thousand!).
 
Upon that ocean’s blue seas
was a russet-colored island;
the horsies galloped swimming,
neighing hopefully,
toward its pleasant,
green-hued, land-based
haven.
 
At first the swimming galloped
free and easy,
the sea that day was calm,
in no way queasy,  
the isle, so they thought,
would surely save ’em
(rhymes with “haven”).
 
But the horsies’ hopes
were turning
somewhat sour;
they were running low,
it seemed,
on horsiepower.
 
The horses neighed out curses
dire and dour
at whomever sought
to drown them,
at the men or gods
in power.
 
But—TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: WE INTERRUPT THIS POEM BY BORIS SLUTSKY TO BRING YOU A BETTER ENDING, FOR SLUTSKY’S ENDING HAS THE SWIMMING HORSES WHINNYING FOR HELP AS THEY RUN OUT OF HORSEPOWER; THEY STOP THEIR GALLOPING/SWIMMING, GIVE UP HOPING TO SURVIVE, THEN SINK GASPING TO THE BOTTOM OF THE DEEP BLUE SEA. AND DROWN. HUH?
 
NEW ENDING:

God was feeling merciful;
He looked down from the sky,
saw the swimming horsies
and said, My, oh my, oh my!
 
Sent a different island down,
put the horsies on it.
There they live this very day,
(all thousand of them!),
whinnying and chomping hay,
galloping toward distant bay,
singing songs and yelling “Yay!”
 
Not swimming anymore.
For horsies, you see, can swim,
but not too well at all . . .
and not that far, oh, none too far,
 
SO: moral of the story.
If you’re a writer writing horsies,
treat your horsies nice; and
be sure to keep your blessed horsies
on DRY LAND!