The Bestest of the Best, TWENTY-SEVEN, Aleksandr Blok, Александр Александрович Блок, "Ты помнишь? В нашей бухте сонной," THE RAINBOW TINTS

 

[Note from U.R. Bowie: I am reposting what I consider the best of my translations of Russian poetry]

Александр Александрович Блок

                     (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.

Мир стал заманчивей и шире,
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...

Как мало в этой жизни надо
Нам, детям, — и тебе и мне.
Ведь сердце радоваться радо
И самой малой новизне.

Случайно на ноже карманном
Найди пылинку дальних стран -
И мир опять предстанет странным,
Закутанным в цветной туман!
 

1911/1914

 

 

d
 
                 Literal Translation
 
Do you remember? In our drowsy bay
The green water was sleeping,
When, in line, one after another,
The warships came sailing in.
 
Four of them—all gray. And for a whole hour
We were all stirred up with questions,
While the suntanned sailors,
Full of themselves, went strutting past us.
 
The world became more alluring and broader,
And then suddenly the ships sailed away.
We watched them, all four of them
As they burrowed into the ocean and the night.
 
And the sea became ordinary anew,
The lighthouse began blinking mournfully
As the last signal was received
From the low semaphore.
 
How little in this life we need,
We children, you and I.
The heart so gladly finds joy
In the very slightest novelty.
 
You need only find a dust-speck of distant lands
By chance on the blade of a penknife,
And once more the world will manifest itself
As strange, wrapped in technicolored haze!

 

 

d
 
                                                 Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
                  The Rainbow Tints
 
The dull-green waters of our inlet 
Lay slumbering in deepest sleep,
When, one by one, the gray quartet
Of warships came in splendrous sweep.

 

Remember? Four of them, slate-gray,
And our brains teemed with fascination,
While suntanned sailors at midday
Went strutting past us, smug, complacent.

Our cramped world broadened—charmed, enthralled—
Then suddenly those ships weighed anchor,
We watched as all four sailed—appalled— 
Dissolved in ocean’s murk and languor.

The sea once more was staid, mundane,
The lighthouse blinked its flickers dismal,
Grasping one last flash profane
From semaphore on seas abysmal.
 
How scant our needs, what we require,
We children, you and I and all.
The least fresh news sets us afire,
How easy fond hearts to enthrall.   
 
By chance on blade of humble penknife
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.