Нежность (Gentleness) by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

This can’t go on:
is after all injustice of its kind.
How in what year did this come into fashion?
Deliberate indifference to the living,
deliberate cultivation of the dead.
Their shoulders slump and they get drunk sometimes
and one by one they quit;
orators at the crematorium
speak words of gentleness to history.
What was it took his life from Mayakovsky?
What was it put the gun between his fingers?
If with that voice of his, with that appearance,
if ever they had offered him in life
some crumbs of gentleness.
Men live. Men are trouble-makers.
Gentleness is a posthumous honour.

by Евгений Александрович Евтушенко
(Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko)
(1960)
translation by Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi

Нежность

Разве же можно,
чтоб все это длилось?
Это какая-то несправедливость…
Где и когда это сделалось модным:
«Живым — равнодушье,
внимание — мертвым?»
Люди сутулятся,
выпивают.
Люди один за другим
выбывают,
и произносятся
для истории
нежные речи о них —
в крематории…
Что Маяковского жизни лишило?
Что револьвер ему в руки вложило?
Ему бы —
при всем его голосе,
внешности —
дать бы при жизни
хоть чуточку нежности.
Люди живые —
они утруждают.
Нежностью
только за смерть награждают.

Additional information: This poem’s subject is the suicide of Vladimir Mayakovsky which, for a long time, was speculated to be a government sanctioned assassination though Mayakovsky was prone to suicidal ideation.

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Our Lodgers by Caril Krane

We had lodgers at our house, we did,
John and George and Mick and Sid.
John was old with balding head
Pleased he’d managed not to wed.
Like to sit on the old sea wall,
Got so drunk once he had a fall.
They fished him out and he did say,
Not a drop I’ll touch from this day.
George as a lad went to sea,
On a training ship, so it be.
On a training ship, so it be.
Stole a pair of boots when he was eight.
That was the punishment at that date.
Mick was Irish like his name,
Singing in the pubs was his fame.
Courted a girl who went into the church,
Became a Nun, he was left in the lurch.
Last but not least we come to Sid,
Always caused trouble, was what he did,
The Police would be ’round knocking the door,
As Grannie would pick him up from the floor.
You’re not staying here any more, she would say
‘I’ll be glad when they come to take you away.’

They died of course, one by one
For Mick a wake was good fun,
George in a sack went to sea,
John said a whiskey case for me.
Sid the worst was the last
Fighting to the end as was his past.
Of course Grannie outlived them all
They were happy times I do recall.

By Caril Krane
(1992)

The Mother of Peredur by Noragh Jones

Six sons and a husband gone to war,

I worried sick. Sure enough

news of their deaths came, one by one.

Then I took Peredur, my last,

To a lonely place, brought him up

in an absence of knights. We were women and children

Touching a gentleness more exact,

Listening, laughing, agreeable together.

Till one day he comes and says,

‘Mother, mother, in the forest

Riders pass in a shining haze’.

‘Ghosts’, I say sadly. ‘Heroes,

Not ghosts’, he shouts, suddenly loud.

‘They’ve promised to teach me how to fight’.

He took our stout old piebald pony,

Kissed me and left. That was the last

I saw of him. The years slip by, and

Travelling folk bring tales of my only

Hero, expecting fat tips

For boosting maternal pride. There is nothing

For them or for me. I am emptied by

His deeds. If I could, I would wish for his

One death, to save the many he will kill.

 

By Noragh Jones

from Women’s Voices from the Mabinogion

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Fun fact: Peredur (Old Welsh Peretur) is the name of a number of men from the boundaries of history and legend in sub-Roman Britain.

In A Restaurant by Alexander Blok

Will I ever forget it, that mythical night:

in the blaze of the setting sun

an abyss divided the sky in two

and the street lamps came on one by one.

 

I sat in a crowd by the window while somewhere

an orchestra sang about love;

I sent you a rose in a glass of champagne

as gold as the heavens above.

 

Returning your arrogant look with a mixture

of pride and confusion, I bowed;

with studied disdain you turned to your escort:

‘That one, too, is in love with me now.’

 

All at once the ecstatic strings thundered out

in response… But still I could see

from your show of contempt, from the tremor that shook

your hand, that your thoughts were with me.

 

You jumped up from your place with the speed of a bird

that’s been startled; your languid perfume,

the swirl of your dress as you passed, died away

like a vision that’s over too soon.

 

But out of its depths a mirror reflected

your glance as you cried: ‘Now’s your chance!’

And a gypsy, jangled her beads, sang of love

to the dawn and started to dance.

 

by Александр Александрович Блок (Alexander Alexandrovich Blok)

(1910)

translated by Stephen Capus

Plainsong by Vladislav Khodasevich

Choke all week in the fumes and air stinking

of fear, for the bare means of life;

spend the Saturday dozing and drinking,

with your arm round an unlovely wife.

 

Then on Sunday by train for an outing,

with a rug to spread out on the grass,

just to doze off again, never doubting,

that for pleasure this stands unsurpassed.

 

And then wake up and put on your jacket,

drag the rug and wife back to the flat,

and not once curse the rug and attack it

with your fists. The world, too. Look, like that!

 

With the same kind of modest expression

do the bubbles in soda ascend,

in a meek and well-ordered procession,

up and up, one by one, to their end.

 

by Владислав Фелицианович Ходасевич (Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich)

(1926)

translated by Michael Frayn