Rhyme [extract] by Yevgeny Baratynsky

You, like the faithful dove, bring back

a green branch to the waiting ark

and place it in his eager hand;

you only with your echoing voice

give inspiration a human face

and bring his dream to land.

 

by Евгений Абрамович Баратынский (Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky)

(1840-43)

translated by Peter France

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Fun fact: This extract refers to Genesis 8:11 where a a dove was released by Noah after the flood in order to find land; it came back carrying a freshly plucked olive leaf – a sign of life after the Flood and of God’s bringing Noah, his family and the animals to land.

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The Cry of Elisha after Elijah by R. S. Thomas

The chariot of Israel came,

And the bold, beautiful knights,

To free from his close prison

The friend who was my delight;

Cold is my cry over the vast deep shaken,

Bereft was I, for he was taken.

 

Through the straight places of Baca

We went with an equal will,

Not knowing who would emerge

First from that gloomy vale;

Cold is my cry; our bond was broken,

Bereft was I, for he was taken.

 

Where, then, came they to rest,

Those steeds and that car of fire?

My understanding is darkened,

It is no gain to enquire;

Better to await the long night’s ending,

Till the light comes, far truths transcending.

 

I yield, since no wisdom lies

In seeking to go his way;

A man without knowledge am I

Of the quality of his joy;

Yet living souls, a prodigious number,

Bright-faced as dawn, invest God’s chamber.

 

The friends that we loved well,

Though they vanished far from our sight,

In a new country were found

Beyond this vale of night;

O blest are they, without pain or fretting

In the sun’s light that knows no setting.

 

by R. S. Thomas (From the Welsh of Thomas William, Bethesda’r Fro)

from The Stones in the Fields (1946)

Lot’s Wife by Anna Akhmatova

And the just man trailed God’s messenger,

His huge, light shape devoured the black hill.

But uneasiness shadowed his wife and spoke to her:

‘it’s not too late, you can look back still

 

At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you,

The square in which you sang, the spinning-shed,

At the empty windows of that upper storey

Where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.’

 

Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt

Of pain shot through them, were instantly blind;

Her body turned into transparent salt,

And her swift legs were rooted to the ground.

 

Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?

Surely her death has no significance?

Yet in my heart she never will be lost,

She who gave up her life to steal one glance.

 

– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (1922-1924)

– from Anno Domini MCMXXI translation by D. M. Thomas