As far as I am concerned
We are driving into oblivion.
On either side there is nothing,
And beyond your driving
Shaft of light it is black.
You are a miner digging
For a future, a mineral
Relationship in the dark.
I can hear the darkness drip
From the other world where people
Might be sleeping, might be alive.
Certainly there are white
Gates with churns waiting
For morning, their cream standing.
Once we saw an old table
Standing square on the grass verge.
Our lamps swept it clean, shook
The crumbs into the hedge and left it.
A tractor too, beside a load
Of logs, bringing from a deeper
Dark a damp whiff of the fungoid
Sterility of the conifers.
Complacently I sit, swathed
In sleepiness. A door shuts
At the end of a dark corridor.
Ahead not a cat's eye winks
To deceive us with its green
Invitation. As you hurl us
Into the black contracting
Chasm, I submit like a blind
And folded baby, being born.
by Gillian Clarke
from The Sundial (Gwasg Gomer, 1978)
Tag: oblivion
‘I Go Outside To Find The Way…’ by Mikhail Lermontov
I go outside to find the way.
Through broken mist I glimpse a flinty path.
I am alone. This empty place hears God;
and stars converse with stars.
The heavens are a miracle
and pale blue sleep lies over all the earth.
What’s wrong with me? Why does life seem so hard?
Do I still cherish hope? Or hurt?
No, no, I have no expectations.
I’ve said goodbye to my past joys and griefs.
Freedom and peace are all I wish for now;
I seek oblivion and sleep.
But not the cold sleep of the grave –
my dream is of a sweeter sleep that will
allow life’s force to rest within a breast
that breathes, that still can rise and fall.
I wish a voice to sing all day
and night to me of love, and a dark tree,
an oak with spreading boughs, to still my sleep
with the green rustle of its leaves.
by Михаил Юрьевич Лермонтов (Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov)
(1841)
translated by Robert Chandler
On Transcience by Gavrila Derzhavin
Time’s river in its rushing course
carries away all human things,
drowns in oblivion’s abyss
peoples and kingdoms and their kings.
And if the trumpet or the lyre
should rescue something, small or great,
eternity will gulp it down
and it will share the common fate.
by Гавриил ”Гаврила” Романович Державин (Gavriil ”Gavrila” Romanovich Derzhavin)
July 1816 – written on a slate a few days or possibly only hours before Derzhavin’s death on 20 July 1816.
Translated by Peter France
Fun fact: Read as an acrostic the first letter of each line forms the phrase ‘руина чти‘ which translates as ‘ruin of honour’, ‘honour the ruin’ or ‘read the ruin’.
Although his works are traditionally considered literary classicism, his best verse is rich with antitheses and conflicting sounds in a way reminiscent of John Donne and other metaphysical poets.
An alternate translation of this, presumably, unfinished fragment found on his table after his death is:
- The current of Time’s river
- Will carry off all human deeds
- And sink into oblivion
- All peoples, kingdoms and their kings.
- And if there’s something that remains
- Through sounds of horn and lyre,
- It too will disappear into the maw of time
- And not avoid the common pyre… <lines broken>
Rambling At The Bridge Head 