Thursday, January 26, 2023

Translation of Poem by Marina Tsvetaeva, Марина Цветаева, "Так," CAUSE

 


Марина Цветаева

(1892-1941)

Так

Почему ты плачешь? — Так. —
Плакать так смешно и
 глупо.
Зареветь, не
 кончив супа!
Отними от
 глаз кулак!

Если плачешь, есть причина.
Я
 отец, и я не враг.
Почему ты
 плачешь? — Так. —
Ну
 какой же ты мужчина?

Отними от глаз кулак!
Что за
 нрав такой? Откуда?
Рассержусь, и
 будет худо!
Почему ты плачешь? — Так.

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Cause

 

Why you crying? “Just because.”

Crying just because is stupid. 

Eat your soup, stop bawling now,

Dry your eyes and sit up straight!

 

If you’re crying there’s a reason;

I’m your father, you can tell me.

Why you crying? “Just because.”


Suck it up and be a man!

 Dry your eyes and sit up straight!

Where’d you learn to be a pussy?

I’ll get mad and you’ll be sorry!


Tell me why you’re crying. “Cause.”

 

 


 recitation on YouTube by Vladimir Glazunov:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnj7rVEbjyU

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Bobby Lee Goosey, THE RUTABAGA RUNNER

 



Bobby Lee Goosey

 

The Rutabaga Runner

I am the rutabaga runner. I run rutabagas in the dark of the night by the light of the moon through the streets of the cloistered metropolis. Why? Because I love rutabagas, with their purplish-white skin and their luscious light-yellow insides. They go just right with mashed potatoes, mashed up along with the mashed potatoes (and then add a dollop of butter): yum.

I grow rutabagas in my garden. Masses of them. Too many for me alone to eat, even though I consume scads and scads and scads of rutabagas. For years I tried to share my extra rutabagas with friends and acquaintances. But there is an ancient stigma attached to liking rutabagas, rutabagas are something one is not supposed to like, and nobody would admit to liking the taste of rutabagas. Not by the light of day. So, even though they all loved, deep down in their viscera, the piquant taste of the luscious yellow insides of the ambrosial rutabaga, friends and acquaintances screwed up fastidious noses at my offer, turned away in disgust. No one would admit, by the light of the day, to wanting, craving rutabagas.

But now I have found a way to provide people with the rutabagas they crave, but minus the stigma. I set my alarm for three. I arise and don my purple velour track suit and running shoes. Under each arm I place a paper bag teeming with the succulent roots, the gift of the gods to humankind. Then I run. I run sequestered by darkness, I run in the dark of the night by the light of the moon through the streets of the cloistered metropolis. Upon the doorstep of a house picked at random I lay my purplish-white (outside) and light-yellow (inside) gifts, and I run to the next house, and then the next; I run, now unburdened and exultant, back in the dark of the night by the light of the moon to my own humble cloistered abode.

I sleep once more and in my dreams I see the loveliness of rutabagas. I see people opening the front doors of their houses by the light of the dawn and the now pallid moon on the streets of the cloistered metropolis. I hear their hushed exclamations of astonished joy:

“John, o John, come quickly. Look. The rutabaga runner has been here! Now we shall have for breakfast mashed potatoes, commingled with the luscious mushy-yellow mashed-up insides of the ambrosial rutabaga. With a big dollop of butter on top. We need not fear the stigma, for no one will see, no one will know. God bless him, God bless the rutabaga runner!”

I sleep on and smile in my dreams. I have found true meaning in life. I am the rutabaga runner.

[from Bobby Goosey's Compendium of Perfectly Sensible Nonsense]



Saturday, January 7, 2023

Translation of Poem by Ivan Bunin, Иван Бунин, "Не видно птиц…" BIRDLESS

                           Illustration to the Bunin Poem, "Birdless," by Gennadi Novozhilov

 

 

Иван Бунин

(1870-1953)

Не видно птиц…

Не видно птиц. Покорно чахнет
Лес, опустевший и
 больной.
Грибы сошли, но
 крепко пахнет
В
 оврагах сыростью грибной.

Глушь стала ниже и светлее,
В
 кустах свалялася трава,
И, под дождем осенним тлея,
Чернеет тёмная листва.

А в поле ветер. День холодный
Угрюм и
 свеж — и целый день
Скитаюсь я
 в степи свободной,
Вдали от
 сел и деревень.

И, убаюкан шагом конным,
С
 отрадной грустью внемлю я,
Как ветер звоном однотонным,
Гудит-поет в
 стволы ружья.

1889 г.

d

Literal Translation

No birds can be seen. Meekly languishes

The forest, now deserted and sick.

The mushrooms are gone, but in the ravines

There is the stringent smell of fungal dampness.

 

The wilds now grow lower and brighter,

Grass has piled up under bushes,

And rotting beneath the autumn rain,

Lies the darkness of leaves.

 

It’s windy in the fields. The day is cold

Morose and crisp—and all day long

I wander in the open steppeland,

Far from villages and hamlets.

 

And lulled by the footfalls of my horse,

With exultant gloom I hearken to

The sounds of the wind as it blows on monotonous,

Whines and sings in the barrels of my gun.

 

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Birdless

 

No birds in sight. Meek in its languishing

Lies the bleak forest, bare, vacant and ill.

Mushrooms are gone, but the air reeks of anguish in

Fungal damp smells that are stringent and shrill.

 

The wilds have a look that is lower and brighter,

Grass bent and crushed piles up under bush,

Beneath the fall rain under skies ever lighter,

Leaves on the rot lie in darkening blush.

 

Cold is the day and windblown is the landscape,

Damp is the air playing sullen refrains,

All day I ride through the steppe’s weary dreamscape,

Far from the settlements, heart unrestrained.  

 

Lulled by the footfalls of equine stark prosody,  

Rapt in my sadness, I heed the wind’s long

Whines of implacable callous monotony;

In my shotgun’s barrels they drone their drear song.

 

d


Translator’s Note

 

Bunin was only nineteen years old when he wrote this poem. Published in the journal “God’s World,” St. Petersburg, Oct., 1898, it attracted notice. In his reminiscences of Tolstoy, Maksim Gorky describes one “morose, autumn day” in the rain when he and Lev Tolstoy went out for a walk in the birch forest. He describes Tolstoy “jumping over ditches and puddles like a young man, shaking drops of rainwater off branches onto his head, and marvelously relating how Shenshin [the poet Fet, landowner neighbor of Tolstoy] explained Schopenhauer to him in that very birch grove.

 “Lovingly stroking the dampish, silken trunks of the birches with a tender hand,” Tolstoy said, ’Somewhere I recently read these lines’ [third and fourth lines of the first stanza of Bunin’s poem]:

Грибы сошли, но крепко пахнет

В оврагах сыростью грибной.

‘That’s really good, and really true,’ said Tolstoy.”

 [cited from Gorky’s Collected Works in the nine-volume collection of Bunin (1965): I, 527]


                                   Bunin's Shotgun on Display at the Bunin Museum in Elets




Friday, January 6, 2023

Translation of Poem by Ivan Bunin, Иван Бунин, "Эпитафия," EPITAPH

                                 Gennadi Novozhilov Illustration to Bunin's Poem "Epitaph"

Иван Бунин

(1870-1953)

 

Эпитафия

 

Я девушкой, невестой умерла.

Он говорил, что я была прекрасна,

Но о любви я лишь мечтала страстно, -

Я краткими надеждами жила.

 

В апрельский день я от людей ушла,

Ушла навек покорно и безгласно –

И все ж была я в жизни не напрасно:

Я для его любви не умерла.

 

Здесь,  в тишине  кладбищенской аллеи,

Где только ветер веет в полусне,

Все говорит о счастье и весне.

 

Сонет любви на старом мавзолее

Звучит бессмертной грустью обо мне,

И небеса синеют вдоль аллеи.

 

1902

 

d

 

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Epitaph

 

I died while still a girl, one just betrothed.

He called me lovely, his consummate wife.

Of love I did but dream, of passion oft,

Short were the hopes by which I lived my life.

 

 One day in April this world I departed.

I left forever, meekly, without plaint.

E’en so my life was worthy and truehearted,

For him our love still lives, free of all taint.

 

Here in the silence of this graveyard arbor,

Where wind doth waft one’s ship as in safe harbor,

All speaks of happiness, of vernal ardor.

 

This sonnet of pure love on wall of tomb

Sounds sempiternal grief for me, my doom,

While grounds and arbor skies of blue illume.

 





 


Monday, January 2, 2023

Translation of Poem by Evgeny Evtushenko, Евгений Евтушенко, "Departing Mothers," "Уходят наши матери от нас"

                                                          Dormition of the Theotokos Icon


Евгений Евтушенко

 

 

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

(1932-2017)

 

Уходят наши матери от нас,
уходят потихонечку,
на цыпочках,
а мы спокойно спим,
едой насытившись,
не замечая этот страшный час.
Уходят матери от нас не сразу,
нет —
нам это только кажется, что сразу.
Они уходят медленно и странно
шагами маленькими по ступеням лет.

Вдруг спохватившись нервно в кой-то год,
им отмечаем шумно дни рожденья,
но это запоздалое раденье
ни их,
ни наши души не спасет.

Все удаляются они,
все удаляются.
К ним тянемся,
очнувшись ото сна,
но руки вдруг о воздух ударяются —
в нем выросла стеклянная стена!

Мы опоздали.
Пробил страшный час.
Глядим мы со слезами потаенными,
как тихими суровыми колоннами
уходят наши матери от нас...

 

1960

 

d

 

 

 

 

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                                                                Departing Mothers 


They’re leaving us, departing, our dear mothers,

on tippy-toes

they, step by step, abscond,

while we, stuffed full with food,

snore under covers,

oblivious of woe at hand, becalmed.

 

The mothers leave, depart from us quite slowly.

Yes.

Their exit only seems to us abrupt.

They slip away in increments, not wholly,

take footsteps small, wish not our lives

to trouble or disrupt.

 

Then comes the day we feel a nervous shudder,

decide they need a boisterous birthday fete,

But that belated flame of joy

soon sputters,

cannot, for them, for us,

our qualms abate.

 

They fade away,

they ever fade still farther.

Awakened from our sleep,

we reach for them,

But now we’re faced with half an empty arbor,

They’ve donned an otherworldly diadem!


Too late.

The fateful bell has sounded.

Tears in our eyes, we harken to that knell,

as silently, into far realms unbounded,

our mothers’ austere spectres rise,

bid us a fond farewell . . .

 


Translation of Poem by Evgeny Evtushenko, Евгений Евтушенко, "Раны," "Wounds (Hurt People Hurt People)"

                                                                         Lisa Redfern Photo


Евгений Евтушенко
(1933-2017)

Раны

Был я столько раз так больно ранен,
добираясь до дому ползком,
но не только злобой протаранен —
можно ранить даже лепестком.

Ранил я и сам — совсем невольно
нежностью небрежной на ходу,
а кому-то после было больно,
словно босиком ходить по льду.

Почему иду я по руинам
самых моих близких, дорогих,
я, так больно и легко ранимый
и так просто ранящий других?

1973

d

 

Literal Translation

Wounds

 

So many times I’ve been so painfully wounded,

That I’ve made it back home at a crawl,

But not only by malice smashed;

For even the petal of a flower can wound.

 

And I myself have wounded [others]; absolutely inadvertently,

By a casual tenderness on the fly,

But afterwards someone felt pain,

As if walking barefoot on ice.

 

Why do I go strolling through the ruins

Of those nearest and most dear to me,

I, who myself am so easily and so painfully wounded,

And who so casually wound others?

 

 

 

 

 

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Hurt People Hurt People

(Wounds)

 

So often I’ve been wounded, sore offended,

knocked all askew, down on my hands and knees,

and not alone by malice sorely rended,

for the petal of a rose can wound with ease.

 

And inadvertently I’ve wounded brothers,  

by tenderness offhanded thinly sliced,

and afterward the pain was passed to others,  

who staggered on as if barefoot on ice.

 

Why do I trip lightly through the wreckage

Of lives of people near and dear I’ve maimed,

I who, wounded, painfully take umbrage,

Why am I so prone to mete out pain?