You're not alone. You haven't died,
while you still,beggar-woman at your side,
take pleasure in the grandeur of the plain,
the gloom, the cold,the whirlwinds of snow.
In sumptuous penury, in mighty poverty
live comforted and at rest -
your days and nights are blest,
your sweet-voiced labour without sin.
Unhappy he, a shadow of himself,
whom a bark astounds and the wind mows down,
and to be pitied he, more dead than alive,
who begs handouts from a ghost.
by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam.)
His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)
(1937)
translated by Andrew Davis
Tag: died
There by R.S. Thomas
They are those that life happens to.
They didn’t ask to be born
In those bleak farmsteads, but neither
Did they ask not. Life took the seed
And broadcast it upon the poor,
Rush-stricken soil, an experiment
In patience.
What is a man’s
Price? For promises of a break
In the clouds; for harvests that are not all
Wasted; for one animal born
Healthy, where seven have died,
He will kneel down and give thanks
In a chapel whose stones are wrenched
From the moorland.
I have watched them bent
For hours over their trade,
Speechless, and have held my tongue
From its question. It was not my part
To show them, like a meddler from the town,
their picture, nor the audiences
That look at them in pity or pride.
by R. S. Thomas
from Pietà (1966)
Баллада о немецком цензоре (The Ballad of a German Censor) by David Samoylov
In Germany once lived a censor
of lowly rank and title.
He blotted, struck and cancelled
and knew no other no other calling.
He sniffed out harmful diction
and smeared it with Indian ink.
He guarded minds from infection
and his bosses valued his work.
On a winter day in forty-three
he was dispatched ‘nach Osten’.
And he stared from the train car’s window
at fields, graveyards, snowstorms.
It was cold without a fur coat.
He saw hamlets without homes or people.
Only charred chimneys were left,
creeping by, like lizards or camels.
And it seemed to him that Russia
was all steppe, Mongoloid, bare.
And he thought he was feeling ‘nostalgia’,
but it was really just the chill and fear.
He arrived at his field post office:
such-and-such region and number.
Table, chair, iron cot and mattress,
three walls – in the fourth, a window.
Russia’s short on Gemütlichkeit!
He had to climb over snowdrifts.
And the work? No shortage of that:
cutting, deleting, smearing.
Before him lay piles of letters,
lines and lines – some straight, some wavy.
Generals wrote to their comrades,
soldiers wrote to their families.
There were letters, messages, queries
from the living, from those who’d been killed.
There were words he judged ‘non-Aryan’,
but it was really just fear and chill.
He would read nearly all day round,
forgetting to eat or shave.
And inside his tired mind
something strange began to take place.
Words he’d blotted and excised
would come and torment him at night,
and, like some eerie circus,
would parade there before his eyes…
Lines, killed by black ink,
turned tyrannical, like a tirade:
‘In the East, the East, the East,
we will not, will not be spared…’
The text was composed of black mosaics;
each word clung fast to the next.
Not the greatest master of prose
could have come up with such a text.
Long thoughts, like wagon trains,
shook the joints and ridges
of his tired and weakened brain;
battered its fragile bridges.
He turned unfriendly to all his friends
and grew brusque, unsociable, sad.
He was brilliant for a few days
and then broke down and went bad.
He awoke, from the fear and chill…
with a wild, choking feeling.
The dark was impenetrable –
the window blacked out with ink.
He realised that bravado leads nowhere,
that existence is fragile,
and the black truth invaded his soul
and wiped away the white lie.
The poor censor was born a pedant.
He reached for a small notebook
and truthfully – that is, with talent –
set everything down, in order.
The next morning he took up, with seal,
his… No – a different task:
he underlined all that was real
and crossed out everything else.
Poor censor, he’d lost his mind!
Little man, like a grain of millet!
He informed on himself in a day
and was taken away that minute…
There once lived a censor in Germany.
His rank and title were low.
He died and was promptly buried,
and his grave fell under the plough.
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.
What They Sell In Stores Nowadays by Daniil Kharms
Koratygin came to see Tikakeyev but did not find him at home.
Meanwhile, Tikakeyev was at the store buying sugar, meat and cucumbers. Koratygin milled around in Tikakeyev’s doorway and was about ready to write him a note when he saw Tikakeyev himself, carrying a plastic satchel in his hands. Koratygin saw Tikakeyev and yelled:
“And I’ve been waiting here for a whole hour!”
“That’s not true,” said Tikakeyev, “I’ve only been out 25 minutes.”
“Well that I don’t know,” said Koratygin, “but I’ve been here an hour, that much I do know.”
“Don’t lie,” said Tikakeyev, “It’s shameful.”
“My good sir,” said Koratygin, “you should use some discretion in choosing your words.”
“I think…,” started Tikakeyev, but Koratygin interrupted:
“If you think…,” he said, but then Tikakeyev interrupted Koratygin, saying:
“You’re one to talk!”
These words so enraged Koratygin that he pinched one nostril with his finger and blew his other nostril at Tikakeyev.
Then Tikakeyev snatched the biggest cucumber from his satchel and hit Koratygin over the head.
Koratygin clasped his hands to his head, fell over and died.
What big cucumbers they sell in stores nowadays!
by Даниил Иванович Хармс (Daniil Ivanovich Kharms)
a.k.a. Даниил Иванович Ювачёв (Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachov)
from Events
translated by Matvei Yankelevich
Death of a Poet by Anna Akhmatova
The unrepeatable voice won’t speak again,
Died yesterday and quit us, the talker with groves.
Or into gentlest rain of which he sang.
And all the flowers that grew only in this world
Came into bloom to meet his death.
And straightway it’s grown quiet on the planet
That bears a name so modest… Earth.
by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova)
(1960)
from Седьмая книга (The Seventh Book)
translation by D. M. Thomas
Fun fact: The poem refers to the death of Boris Pasternak (29 January 1890 – 30 May 1960).
