Музыка (Music) by Anna Akhmatova

for D. D. Sh.

Something miraculous burns brightly;

its facets form before my eyes.

And it alone can speak to me

when no one will stand by my side.

 

When my last friends had turned and gone

from where I lay, it remained close –

burst into blossom, into song,

like a first storm, like speaking flowers.

 

by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova)

(1958)

translation by Boris Dralyuk

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Fun facts: the D. D. Sh. this poem is dedicated to is the famous composer Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович) whose music she liked though they held opposing views. Anna Akhmatova and Dmitry Shostakovich met before the war. They met quite often at various cultural events, although they did not get along with each other. According to one version, Shostakovich did not share the poet’s views on dissidence, believing that it wasn’t worthwhile to help Russian writers abroad, since they openly opposed Soviet power. Akhmatova, in turn, was convinced that the country should know its heroes, and went as far as to even solicit, before her friends, the editors of magazines to begin publishing the works of emigrants.

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Akhmatova reciting her poem:

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Original Cyrillic text:

Музыка

Д. Д. Ш.

В ней что-то чудотворное горит,
И на глазах ее края гранятся.
Она одна со мною говорит,
Когда другие подойти боятся.
Когда последний друг отвел глаза,
Она была со мной одна в могиле
И пела словно первая гроза
Иль будто все цветы заговорили.

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Rhymney by Idris Davies

For Ceinfryn and Gwyn

 

When April came to Rhymney

With shower and sun and shower,

The green hills and the brown hills

Could sport some simple flower,

And sweet it was to fancy

That even the blackest mound

Was proud of its single daisy

Rooted in bitter ground.

 

And old men would remember

And young men would be vain,

And the hawthorn by the pithead

Would blossom in the rain,

And the drabbest streets of evening,

They had their magic hour,

When April came to Rhymney

With shower and sun and shower.

 

by Idris Davies

‘I Love A Despairing Peace…’ by Georgy Ivanov

I love a despairing peace:

chrysanthemum blossoms in fall,

lights adrift in a river of mist,

a sunset that has turned pale,

nameless graves, all the clichés

of a Symbolist ‘wordless romance’ –

what Annensky loved with such greed

and Gumilyov couldn’t stand.

 

by Георгий Владимирович Иванов (Georgii Vladimirovich Ivanov)

(1954)

translated by Robert Chandler

Resurrection by R. S. Thomas

Easter. The grave clothes of winter

are still here, but the sepulchre

is empty. A messenger

from the tomb tells us

how a stone has been rolled

from the mind, and a tree lightens

the darkness with its blossom.

There are travellers upon the roads

who have heard music blown

from a bare bough, and a child

tells us how the accident

of last year, a machine stranded

beside the way for lack

of petrol is covered with flowers.

 

by R. S. Thomas

Landscapes I. New Hampshire by T. S. Eliot

Children’s voices in the orchard

Between the blossom- and the fruit-time:

Golden head, crimson head.

Between the green tip and the root.

Black wing, brown wing, hover over;

Today grieves, tomorrow grieves,

Cover me over, light-in-leaves;

Golden head, black wing,

Cling, swing,

Spring, sing,

Swing up into the apple-tree.

 

by T. S. Eliot

from Minor Poems