Чертовы качели (The Devil’s Swing) by Fyodor Sologub

Beneath a shaggy fir tree,
Above a noisy stream
The devil’s swing is swinging
Pushed by his hairy hand.

He swings the swing while laughing,
Swing high, swing low,
Swing high, swing low,
The board is bent and creaking,
Against a heavy branch.

The swaying board is rushing
With long and drawn-out creaks;
With hand on hip, the devil
Is laughing with a wheeze.

I clutch, I swoon, I’m swinging,
Swing high, swing low,
Swing high, swing low,
I’m clinging and I’m dangling,
And from the devil trying
To turn my languid gaze.

Above the dusky fir tree
The azure sky guffaws:
“You’re caught upon the swings, love,
The devil take you, swing!”

Beneath the shaggy fir tree
The screeching throng whirls around:
“You’re caught upon the swings, love,
The devil take you, swing!”

The devil will not slacken
The swift board’s pace, I know,
Until his hand unseats me
With a ferocious blow.

Until the jute, while twisting,
Is frayed through till it breaks,
Until my ground beneath me
Turns upward to my face.

I’ll fly above the fir tree
And fall flat on the ground.
So swing the swing, you devil,
Go higher, higher… oh!

.

by Фёдор Сологуб (Fyodor Sologub)
a.k.a. Фёдор Кузьмич Тетерников (Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov)
(14 July 1907)
Translated by April FitzLyon

The poem recited by Ekatrina Sorokova

Beneath is the original Russian version of the poem in Cyrillic.

Чертовы качели

В тени косматой ели,
Над шумною рекой
Качает черт качели
Мохнатою рукой.

Качает и смеется,
Вперед, назад,
Вперед, назад,
Доска скрипит и гнется,
О сук тяжелый трется
Натянутый канат.

Снует с протяжным скрипом
Шатучая доска,
И черт хохочет с хрипом,
Хватаясь за бока.

Держусь, томлюсь, качаюсь,
Вперед, назад,
Вперед, назад,
Хватаюсь и мотаюсь,
И отвести стараюсь
От черта томный взгляд.

Над верхом темной ели
Хохочет голубой:
– Попался на качели,
Качайся, черт с тобой!-

В тени косматой ели
Визжат, кружась гурьбой:
– Попался на качели,
Качайся, черт с тобой!-

Я знаю, черт не бросит
Стремительной доски,
Пока меня не скосит
Грозящий взмах руки,

Пока не перетрется,
Крутяся, конопля,
Пока не подвернется
Ко мне моя земля.

Взлечу я выше ели,
И лбом о землю трах!
Качай же, черт, качели,
Все выше, выше… ах!

Книга жалоб – в каждом магазине… (Every Store…) by Yevgeny Vinokurov

Every store keeps a book for complaints
And, if you ask for it, they have to give it to you!
It wouldn’t be a bad idea, I think,
If eternity had a book like that.
Then people wouldn’t have to keep silent about their sorrow.
…Timidly, cautious at first, they would all come, bringing
The griefs they endure, the wrongs they are made to suffer
To universal attention and judgement.
How we should then be struck, I know,
By one entry of half a line
written
By that woman who, slumped against its railings,
Was crying in the park last night…

.

by Евгений Михайлович Винокуров (Yevgeny Mikhailovich Vinokurov)
(1961)
Translated by Albert C. Todd

Additional information: He served in the artillery during the Second World War, studied at the Gorky Literary Institute and published his first poems in 1948. As co-editor of the poetry section of the journal Октябрь (October) he published Boris Slutsky, Nikolai Zabolotsky and the young Bella Akhmadulina amongst many others.

Beneath is the original Russian version of the poem in Cyrillic.

.

Книга жалоб – в каждом магазине…

Книга жалоб – в каждом магазине,
Требуйте её, – должны подать!..

Предлагаю вечности: отныне
Завести подобную тетрадь,

Чтоб о боли люди не молчали,
И тогда-то на вселенский суд
Все свои обиды и печали
Люди осторожно понесут…

Как тогда б, я знаю, поразила
Надпись в полстроки из-под пера
Женщины, что павши на перила,
Ночью в парке плакала вчера.

1961

Leaving Cardiff by Dannie Abse

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 .

I’m Nothing To You, I Mean Zero by Maria Petrovykh

I’m nothing to you, I mean zero.

I know, there’s nothing more to say.

And yet I love you still more dearly,

ecstatically and without mercy,

and like a drunk, I stumble, reel,

and loiter in a lightless alley,

insisting that I love you still –

no mercy, and ecstatically.

 

by Мария Сергеевна Петровых (Maria Sergeyevna Petrovykh)

(1959)

translated by Boris Dralyuk