Naked thoughts live unembellished.
That saying’s a lie, you can’t
twice and so forth, whatever it is.
A thousandth time I enter the same river.
And I see the same grey stones on the bottom,
the same carp with its gristly fins,
the same sun in the blue patch of sky
washes the yellow spot for ages.
In the same river the willow weeps,
the same waters ripple tunefully,
no day passes but into the same river
I enter, the very same life.
by Инна Львовна Лиснянская (Inna Lvovna Lisnyanskaya)
(2003)
translated by Daniel Weissbort
She was the wife of Semyon Lipkin. The above poem was written shortly after his death.
There isn’t much about her in English so if you want to know more you may have to research her husband intially and work from there for biographical details. However one collection of her poetic works titled ‘Far from Sodom‘ is available in English should you wish to read more of her writing.
She was born in Baku and published her first collection in 1957 then moved to Moscow three years later. In 1979 she and her husband resigned from the Union of Soviet Writers in protest to the expulsion of Viktor Yerofeyev and Yevgeny Popov from it. The following seven years her works were only published abroad though from 1986 she was able to publish regularly and was awarded several important prizes.
Rambling At The Bridge Head 