The archer with time
as his arrow – has he broken
his strings that the rainbow
is so quiet over our village?
Let us stand, then in the interval
of our wounding, till the silence
turn golden and love is
a moment eternally overflowing.
by R. S. Thomas
from No Truce With the Furies (1995)
‘Lord, in broad daylight
apathy overcame me.
Allow me to lie down and fall asleep Lord,
and while I sleep fill me Lord
with your strength.
There is much I want to know,
but neither books nor people
will tell me this.
May You alone Lord enlighten me
by means of my verses.
Wake me strong for the battle with meaning,
swift in the arrangement of words
and zealous to praise the name of God
for ever and ever.
by Даниил Иванович Хармс (Daniil Ivanovich Kharms)
a.k.a. Даниил Иванович Ювачёв (Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachov)
(date unknown)
translated by Robert Chandler
The shuffling elders: a shambles
of sheep, an abject throng!
I uncoil like a snake,
my heart an ancient ache
of dark Judaic wrong.
But it will not be long
before I shake off sadness,
like a boy, in the evening,
shaking sand from his sandals.
by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam. His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)
(1914)
translated by James Greene
Fun facts: Euripides (Εὐριπίδης), c. 480 – c. 406 BC, was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom a significant number of plays have survived. There are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined —he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Not a word will I utter
of what I keep muttering to myself –
not for anything in the world.
Night flowers sleep all summer’s day
but leaves wake as sun sets behind a corpse –
and my heart starts to blossom.
And into my tired breast wafts a moist
breath of evening. Something flutters, is stirred.
But no, not a word.
by Афанасий Афанасьевич Фет (Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet)
a.k.a. Шеншин (Shenshin)
(1885)
translated by Robert Chandler
You should quit smoking in order to boast of your will power.
It would be nice, not having smoked for a week and having acquired confidence in yourself that you will be able to hold back from smoking, to come into the company of Lipavsky, Oleinikov, and Zabolotsky, so that they would notice on their own that all evening you haven’t been smoking.
And when they ask, “Why aren’t you smoking?” you would answer, concealing the frightful boasting inside you, “I quit smoking.”
A great man must not smoke.
It is good and useful to employ the fault of boastfulness to rid yourself of the fault of smoking.
The love of wine, gluttony, and boastfulness are lesser faults than smoking.
A man who smokes is never at the height of his circumstance, and a smoking woman is capable of just about anything. And so, comrades, let us quit smoking.
by Даниил Иванович Хармс (Daniil Ivanovich Kharms)
a.k.a. Даниил Иванович Ювачёв (Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachov)
(1933)
translated by Matvei Yankelevich
Fun facts: Lipavsky refers to Leonid Lipavsky, Oleinikov to Nikolay Oleynikov, and Zabolotsky to Nikolay Zabolotsky.
Zabolotsky was part of OBERIU (ОБэРИу) a short-lived avant-garde collective of Russian Futurist writers, musicians, and artists in the 1920s and 1930s. The group coalesced in the context of the “intense centralization of Soviet Culture” and the decline of the avant garde culture of Leningrad, as “leftist” groups were becoming increasingly marginalized.
Lipavsky and Oleynikov belonged to a later grouping, which had no public outlet, is generally called the “chinari” (i.e. “the titled ones”) group in Russian literary scholarship, though it is uncertain that they ever formalized a name for the group, nor that they called themselves “chinari” with any consistency. Thus, the names “OBERIU” and “chinari” are somewhat interchangeable in the scholarship. The borders between the two groups are (and were) permeable, and the only basic continuity is the presence of Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky.
I wait in the evening air.
Sea-birds drop down to the sea.
I prepare to sail from where
the docks’ derelictions are.
I stand on the deck and stare,
slack hammocks of waves below,
while black shapes upon the pier
make the furthest star seem near.
Now the funnel’s negations blow
and my eyes, like spaces, fill,
and the knots of water flow,
pump to my eyes and spill.
For what who would choose to go
when who sailing made no choice?
Not for one second, I know,
can I be the same man twice.
The straw coloured flames flare still,
spokes over the long horizon,
and the boats under the hill
of Penarth, unload and move on.
by Dannie Abse
from Tenants of the House (1957)
Fun facts: This was written in 1957 and the former working docks, which by the time of the poem were ‘derelict’ and I myself recall in childhood walking through along the barrage, were redeveloped (‘gentrified’ wouldn’t be an understatement) in recent years into the Cardiff Bay area filled with bars, restaurants, the Wales Millennium Centre, the Senedd and BBC buildings amongst many other developments. Penarth is an affluent town, within walking distance along the coastline, south west of Cardiff .
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
