Снег лежит… (Snow Lies) by Alexander Vvedensky

snow lies
earth flies
lights flip
to pigments night has come
on a rug of stars it lies
is it night or a demon?
like an inane lever
sleeps the insane river
it is not aware
of the moon everywhere
animals gnash their canines
in black gold cages
animals bang their heads
animals are the ospreys of saints
the world flies around the universe
nearby the white hot stars
flits imperishable bird
seeks a home a nest
there’s no nest a hole
the universe is alone
maybe rarely will pass
time as poor as a night
or a daughter in a bed
will grow sleepy and then dead
then a crowd of revelations
enter in and cry alas
in steel houses
howl loudly
she’s gone and buried
hopped to paradise big-bellied
God God have pity
good God on the precipice
but God said Go play
and she entered paradise
there spun any which way
numbers houses and seas
in the inessential they
what exists in vain perceived
there God languished behind bars
with no eyes no legs no arms
so that maiden in tears
sees all this in the heavens
sees sundry eagles
appear out of night
and fly sullen
and flash silent
this is so depressing
the dead maiden will say
serenely amazed
God will inquire
what’s depressing? what’s
depressing, God, life
what are you talking about
what O noon do you know
you press pleasure and Paris
to your impetuous breast
you dress like music
you undress like a statue
the forest then roared
in lonely despair
it saw through earth’s tares
a meandering ribbon
a strip curvilinear
curvy Lena you are
Mercury was in the air
spinning like a top
and the bear in the bush
sunned his coat
people also walked around
bearing fish on a platter
bearing on their hands
ten fingers on a ladder
while all this went on
that maiden rested
rose from the dead and forgot
yawned and said
you guys, I had a dream
what can it mean
dreams are worse than macaroni
they make crows double over
I was not at all dying
I was gaping and lying
undulating and crying
I was so terrifying
a fit of lethargy
was had by me among the effigies
let’s enjoy ourselves really
let’s gallop to the cinema
she sped off like a she-ass
to satisfy her innermost
lights glint in the heaven
is it night or a demon

by Александр Иванович Введенский
(Alexander Ivanovich Vvendensky)
(January 1930)
translated by Eugene Ostashevsky

The poem set to music.
Исполняют: Владимир Кузнецов и Константин Учитель / Performed by: Vladimir Kuznetsov and Konstantin Uchitel

Снег лежит…

снег лежит
земля бежит
кувыркаются светила
ночь пигменты посетила
ночь лежит в ковре небес
ночь ли это? или бес?
как свинцовая рука
спит бездумная река
и не думает она
что вокруг неё луна
звери лязгают зубами
в клетках чёрных золотых
звери стукаются лбами
звери коршуны святых
мир летает по вселенной
возле белых жарких звёзд
вьётся птицею нетленной
ищет крова ищет гнёзд
нету крова нету дна
и вселенная одна
может изредка пройдёт
время бледное как ночь
или сонная умрёт
во своей постели дочь
и придёт толпа родных
станет руки завивать
в обиталищах стальных
станет громко завывать
умерла она – исчезла
в рай пузатая залезла
Боже Боже пожалей
Боже правый на скале
но ответил Бог играй
и вошла девица в рай
там вертелось вкось и вкривь
числа домы и моря
в несущественном открыв
существующее зря
там томился в клетке Бог
без очей без рук без ног
так девица вся в слезах
видит это в небесах
видит разные орлы
появляются из мглы
и тоскливые летят
и беззвучные блестят
о как мрачно это всё
скажет хмурая девица
Бог спокойно удивится
спросит мёртвую её
что же мрачно дева? Что
мрачно Боже – бытиё
что ты дева говоришь
что ты полдень понимаешь
ты веселье и Париж
дико к сердцу прижимаешь
ты под музыку паришь
ты со статуей блистаешь
в это время лес взревел
окончательно тоскуя
он среди земных плевел
видит ленточку косую
эта ленточка столбы
это Леночка судьбы
и на небе был Меркурий
и вертелся как волчок
и медведь в пушистой шкуре
грел под кустиком бочок
а кругом ходили люди
и носили рыб на блюде
и носили на руках
десять пальцев на крюках
и пока всё это было
та девица отдохнула
и воскресла и забыла
и воскресшая зевнула
я спала сказала братцы
надо в этом разобраться
сон ведь хуже макарон
сон потеха для ворон
я совсем не умирала
я лежала и зияла
извивалась и орала
я пугала это зало
летаргический припадок
был со мною между кадок
лучше будем веселиться
и пойдём в кино скакать
и помчалась как ослица
всем желаньям потакать
тут сияние небес
ночь ли это или бес

Additional information: Alexander Ivanovich Vvedensky (Алекса́ндр Ива́нович Введе́нский; 6 December 1904 – 19 December 1941) was a Russian poet and dramatist with formidable influence on “unofficial” and avant-garde art during and after the times of the Soviet Union. Vvedensky is widely considered (among contemporary Russian writers and literary scholars) as one of the most original and important authors to write in Russian in the early Soviet period. Vvedensky considered his own poetry “a critique of reason more powerful than Kant’s.”

In Tufanov‘s sound-poetry circle he met Daniil Kharms, with whom he went on to found the OBERIU group (in 1928). Together Kharms and Vvedensky, along with several other young writers, actors, and artists, staged various readings, plays, and cabaret-style events in Leningrad in the late 1920s. Vvedensky, as written in the OBERIU manifesto, was considered the most radical poet of the group.

Vvedensky, like Kharms, worked in children’s publishing to get by, and was also quite accomplished in the field. He wrote vignettes for children’s magazines, translated books of children’s literature, and wrote several children’s books of his own.

Editor’s note: If you are reading this on 1 January 2023 then Happy New Year! С новым годом! Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question …

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

 

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

 

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

 

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

 

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

 

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

 

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

               So how should I presume?

 

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

               And how should I presume?

 

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

               And should I then presume?

               And how should I begin?

 

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

 

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

 

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep … tired … or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

               That is not it, at all.”

 

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

               “That is not it at all,

               That is not what I meant, at all.”

 

. . . . .

 

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

 

I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

 

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

 

I do not think that they will sing to me.

 

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

 

by T. S. Eliot

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Fun Facts:

Like many of Eliot’s poems, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” makes numerous allusions to other works, which are often symbolic themselves.

• In “Time for all the works and days of hands” (29) the phrase ‘works and days’ is the title of a long poem – a description of agricultural life and a call to toil – by the early Greek poet Hesiod.
• “I know the voices dying with a dying fall” (52) echoes Orsino’s first lines in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
• The prophet of “Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter / I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter” (81–2) is John the Baptist, whose head was delivered to Salome by Herod as a reward for her dancing (Matthew 14:1–11, and Oscar Wilde’s play Salome).
• “To have squeezed the universe into a ball” (92) and “indeed there will be time” (23) echo the closing lines of Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’. Other phrases such as, “there will be time” and “there is time” are reminiscent of the opening line of that poem: “Had we but world enough and time”. Marvell’s words in turn echo the General Prologue of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, “whil I have tyme and space”.
• “‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead'” (94) may be either the beggar Lazarus (of Luke 16) returning for the rich man who was not permitted to return from the dead to warn the brothers of a rich man about Hell, or the Lazarus (of John 11) whom Christ raised from the dead, or both.
• “Full of high sentence” (117) echoes Chaucer’s description of the Clerk of Oxford in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales.
• “There will be time to murder and create” is a biblical allusion to Ecclesiastes 3.
• In the final section of the poem, Prufrock rejects the idea that he is Prince Hamlet, suggesting that he is merely “an attendant lord” (112) whose purpose is to “advise the prince” (114), a likely allusion to Polonius — Polonius being also “almost, at times, the Fool.”
• “Among some talk of you and me” may be a reference to Quatrain 32 of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (“There was a Door to which I found no Key / There was a Veil past which I could not see / Some little Talk awhile of Me and Thee / There seemed — and then no more of Thee and Me.”)

Landscapes III. Usk by T. S. Eliot

Do not suddenly break the branch, or

Hope to find

The white hart behind the white well.

Glance aside, not for lance, do not spell

Old enchantments. Let them sleep.

‘Gently dip, but not too deep’,

Lift your eyes

Where the roads dip and where the roads rise

Seek only there

Where the grey light meets the green air

The hermit’s chapel, the pilgrim’s prayer.

 

by T. S. Eliot

from Minor Poems

Landscapes II. Virginia by T. S. Eliot

Red river, red river,

Slow flow heat is silence

No will is still as a river

Still. Will heat move

Only through the mocking-bird

Heard once? Still hills

Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees,

White trees, wait, wait,

Delay, decay. Living, living,

Never moving. Ever moving

Iron thoughts came with me

And go with me:

Red river, river, river.

 

by T. S. Eliot

from Minor Poems