Scarped against the sky it rises it’s
Shadow bare of grass and gorse,
Barren are it’s granite ledges, worn
Fine through erosive force,
Shrouded in the firmament it’s peak
Lies cold and stark,
A tomb for scoria and fossils, from
An age that has left it’s mark.
Towering these weathering crags reign
Obscurely above the earth –
A lonely black mountain, sterile since
It’s birth.
.
.
By Donald Sainsbury
The forties, fateful,
warring, frontline,
with funeral notices,
clattering trains.
The hum of the rails.
All is cold, high and barren.
Their houses have burned –
they’re heading east.
That’s me at the station
in my scruffy wool cap.
The star’s not standard issue –
it’s cut from a can.
Yes, here I am in the world,
skinny, happy, carefree.
I’ve got tobacco in my pouch –
I have a stash of rolling papers.
I joke with the girls,
and limp a little overmuch.
I break my rationed bread in half,
and I know everything on earth.
Imagine! What coincidence –
war, horror, dreams and youth!
And all of it sank deep inside me…
and only later did it wake.
The forties, fateful,
lead and gun smoke…
War wanders through the land.
And we are all so young!
by Давид Самойлов (David Samoylov)
pseudonym of Давид Самуилович Кауфман (David Samuilovich Kaufman)
(1961)
translated by Boris Dralyuk
Additional information: David Samoylov (Давид Самойлов), pseudonym of David Samuilovich Kaufman ( Давид Самуилович Кауфман; 1 June 1920 in Moscow — 23 February 1990 in Tallinn) was a notable poet of the War generation of Russian poets, considered one of the most important Russian poets of the post-World War II era as well.
A recital of the poem in its original Russian:
The original Cyrillic Russian version of the poem:
Сороковые
Сороковые, роковые,
Военные и фронтовые,
Где извещенья похоронные
И перестуки эшелонные.
Гудят накатанные рельсы.
Просторно. Холодно. Высоко.
И погорельцы, погорельцы
Кочуют с запада к востоку…
А это я на полустанке
В своей замурзанной ушанке,
Где звездочка не уставная,
А вырезанная из банки.
Да, это я на белом свете,
Худой, веселый и задорный.
И у меня табак в кисете,
И у меня мундштук наборный.
И я с девчонкой балагурю,
И больше нужного хромаю,
И пайку надвое ломаю,
И все на свете понимаю.
Как это было! Как совпало –
Война, беда, мечта и юность!
И это все в меня запало
И лишь потом во мне очнулось!..
Сороковые, роковые,
Свинцовые, пороховые…
Война гуляет по России,
А мы такие молодые!
A little aside from the main road,
becalmed in a last-century greyness,
there is the chapel, ugly, without the appeal
to the tourist to stop his car
and visit it. The traffic goes by,
and the river goes by, and quick shadows
of clouds, too, and the chapel settles
a little deeper into the grass.
But here once on an evening like this,
in the darkness that was about
his hearers, a preacher caught fire
and burned steadily before them
with a strange light, so that they saw
the spendour of the barren mountains
about them and sang their amens
fiercely, narrow but saved
in a way that men are not now.
by R. S. Thomas
from Laboratories of the Spirit (1975)
Rambling At The Bridge Head 