‘How bare the countryside! What dearth’ by Fyodor Tyutchev

How bare the countryside! What dearth

How stark the  hamlets’ desolation…

Long-suffering country of my birth,

poor homeland of the Russian nation.

 

Never will the stranger’s gaze

look deeper to perceive or guess

what hidden light there is that plays

and shimmers through your nakedness.

 

In servant’s guise the King of Heaven,

beneath the cross in anguish bent,

has walked the length and breadth of Russia,

blessing her people as he went.

 

by Фёдор Иванович Тютчев (Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev)

(1855)

translated by Avril Pyman

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Fun fact: Counted amongst the admirers of Tyutchev’s works were Dostoevsky and Tolstoy along with Nekrasov and Fet. Then later Osip Mandelstam who, in a passage approved of by Shalamov, believed that a Russian poet should not have copy of Tyutchev in his personal library – he should know all of Tyutchev off by heart.

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Clywedog by Gillian Clarke

The people came out in pairs,

Old, most of them, holding their places

Close till the very last minute,

Even planting the beans as usual

That year, grown at last accustomed

To the pulse of the bulldozers.

High in those uphill gardens, scarlet

Beanflowers blazed hours after

The water rose in the throats of the farms.

 

Only the rooted things stayed:

The wasted hay, the drowned

Dog roses, the farms, their kitchens silted

With their own stones, hedges

And walls a thousand years old.

And the mountains, in a head-collar

Of flood, observe a desolation

They’d grown used to before the coming

Of the wall-makers. Language

Crumbles to wind and bird-call.

 

by Gillian Clarke

from The Sundial (Gwasg Gomer, 1978)

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Fun fact: The subject of this poem is the Clywedog reservoir (Welsh: Llyn Clywedog), a reservoir near Llanidloes, in Wales which was completed in 1967. Construction of the dam commenced in 1963 after the passing of an Act of Parliament ordering its creation to help prevent flooding of the River Severn in winter and to maintain its water levels in the summer. Local opposition was strong against the construction of the reservoir as it would result in the flooding of much of the Clywedog valley and the drowning of 615 acres (2.5 km²) of agricultural land. On top of several disruptions and protests, during construction in 1966 a bomb was detonated within the construction site, setting work back by almost 2 months. The political extremist group Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru (MAC) was widely suspected of carrying out the bombing. The reservoir was opened in 1967 and till this day has been in continuous usage,