Веселись, душа, пей и ешь! (Make merry, my soul…) by Marina Tsvetaeva

Веселись, душа, пей и ешь! (Make merry, my soul) by Marina Tsvetaeva

Make merry, my soul, drink and eat!
When my last hour goes
Stretch me so that my two feet
Cover four high roads.

Where, the empty fields across,
Wolves and ravens roam,
Over me make the shape of a cross,
Signpost looming alone.

In the night I have never shunned
Places accursed and blamed.
High above me you shall stand,
Cross without a name.

More than one of you was drunk, full-fed
On me, companions, friends.
Cover me over to my head
Tall weeds of the fens.

Do not light a candle for me
In the church’s depth.
I don’t want eternal memory
On my native earth.

.

by Марина Ивановна Цветаева
(Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva)
(4 April 1916)
from Bon-Voyages (1921-22)
translated by David McDuff

Beneath is the original form of the poem in Cyrillic.

.

Веселись, душа, пей и ешь!

Веселись, душа, пей и ешь!
А настанет срок –
Положите меня промеж
Четырех дорог.

Там где во поле, во пустом
Воронье да волк,
Становись надо мной крестом,
Раздорожный столб!

Не чуралася я в ночи
Окаянных мест.
Высоко надо мной торчи,
Безымянный крест.

Не один из вас, други, мной
Был и сыт и пьян.
С головою меня укрой,
Полевой бурьян!

Не запаливайте свечу
Во церковной мгле.
Вечной памяти не хочу
На родной земле.

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Коршун (The Kite) by Alexander Blok

Over the empty fields a black kite hovers,

and circle after circle smoothly weaves.

In the poor hut, over her son in a cradle

a mother grieves:

‘There suck my breast: there, grow and take our bread,

and learn to bear your cross and bow your head.’

 

Time passes. War returns. Rebellion rages.

The farms and villages go up in flame,

and Russia in her ancient tear-stained beauty,

is yet the same,

unchanged through all the ages. How long will

the mother grieve and the kite circle still?

 

by Александр Александрович Блок (Alexander Alexandrovich Blok)

(22 March 1916)

translated by Frances Cornford and Esther Polianowsky Salaman

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Fun fact: As you can tell from the date this was written into the lead up to the Russian Revolution. To be more exact, during the early months of 1916, there were increasing food and fuel shortages and increasingly high prices. Thus the Progressive Bloc was formed. Despite successes in the Brusilov offensive, the Russian war effort was still characterised by shortages, poor command, death and desertion. Away from the front, the conflict caused starvation, inflation and a torrent of refugees. Both soldiers and civilians blamed the incompetence of the Tsar and his government. This lead, later in the year, to increasing strikes which are supported by the military who declare they won’t protect the Tsar from a revolution – which would be successful in October 1917 after many further events and internal conflicts.

A recital of the poem in Russian:

The original Russian text in Cyrillic:

Чертя за кругом плавный круг,
Над сонным лугом коршун кружит
И смотрит на пустынный луг. —
В избушке мать над сыном тужит:
«На́ хлеба, на́, на́ грудь, соси,
Расти, покорствуй, крест неси».

Идут века, шумит война,
Встаёт мятеж, горят деревни,
А ты всё та ж, моя страна,
В красе заплаканной и древней. —
Доколе матери тужить?
Доколе коршуну кружить?

In Early Autumn Sweetly Wistful by Fyodor Tyutchev

In early autumn sweetly wistful,

there is a short but wonderous interim,

when days seem made as though of crystal,

with evenings luminously dim…

 

Without their tillers, empty fields look wider;

where sickles ravaged in the harvester’s ebb,

a single thread left by a spider

still speaks of the unravelled web.

 

Warblers have gone, afraid of future shadows,

yet far away is winter’s firstborn storm,

and heaven pours its azure, pure and warm,

on quietly resting fields and meadows…

 

by Фёдор Иванович Тютчев (Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev)

(1857)

translated by Anatoly Liberman