Как дрожит на ветреном закате (How the sun trembles in the windy sunset) by Novella Matveyeva

How the sun trembles in the windy sunset.

Through the breaks in the trees

Its multitudinous rays

Toss like strands

In a bright flowing mane.

They fuse together, glittering

Like the flash of blades,

Each flash

Obscuring

Its predecessor…

The wood, misty under the slanting rays,

Sketches a royal crest,

Receives the sun’s teeth in its curly head,

Is distracted, dispersed, pale.

But already, like the final curtain,

The edge of the wood is moving towards darkness,

The sun prepares to set sail,

The distance slackens, the sky’s an orphan…

Clumps of trees

Shuffle wildly,

Silently their half-transparent,

Ambiguous, recumbent shadows

Drift away.

And already the trees,

On the threshold

Of the unknown night,

Shiver,

No longer

Believing in their shadows

Once they’ve fled.

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By Новелла Николаевна Матвеева (Novella Nikolayevna Matveyeva)

(1965)

translated by Daniel Weissbort

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Beneath is the original Russian Cyrillic version of the poem.

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Как дрожит на ветреном закате

Как дрожит на ветреном закате

Солнце сквозь древесные прорывы!

Тьмы лучей волнуются, как пряди

Золотой взвивающейся гривы.

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Перепутываются, сверкают

Фехтовальным блеском пререканья,

Новые сверкания свергают

С трона предыдущее сверканье.

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Дымный под наклонными лучами,

Образующими царский гребень,

Зубья солнца в кудри получая,

Лес растерян, распылен и бледен.

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Но уже, как занавес к закрытью,

К темноте край леса тяготеет,

Солнце наклоняется к отплытью,

Даль слабеет, небо сиротеет.

.

Пятна рощ сместились, как шальные,

Тихо от деревьев отлетели

Их полупрозрачные, двойные,

Ложные, двусмысленные тени.

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И уже деревья у преддверья

Неизвестной ночи задрожали,

И уже своим теням не верят,

Потому что тени убежали.

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Additional information: Matveyeva was born on 7 October 1934 in Pushkin, Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad). She suffered the fate of so many war children and was brought up in children’s homes and, later, apparently spent much of her time in hospitals. She was a Russian bard, poet, writer, screenwriter, dramatist, and literary scientist.

Novella was also the cousin of poet Ivan Matveyev (Elagin). Her first poetry collection, Lyrics, was published in 1961 which was the same year she was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers.

From the end of the 1950s on Matveyeva composed songs to her poetry and performed them, accompanying herself on a seven-string guitar. The element of fantasy and the dreamlike atmosphere of much of her poetry is unusual in the Soviet context.

In 1998 Matveyeva received the Russian State Pushkin Prize in poetry, and in 2002, she received the Russian Federation State Prize in Literature and Arts for her poetry collection Jasmine. Matveyeva died on 4 September 2016 at the age of 81 in Moscow Oblast.

Invitation by R. S. Thomas

And one voice says: Come
Back to the rain and manure
Of Siloh, to the small talk,
Of the wind,and the chapel's

Temptation; to the pale,
Sickly half-smile of
The daughter of the village
Grocer. The other says: Come

To the streets, where the pound
Sings and the doors open
To its music, with life
Like an express train running

To time. And I stay
Here, listening to them, blowing
On the small soul in my
Keeping with such breath as I have.

by R. S. Thomas
from H'm (1972)

Siloh is a hamlet in Llandovery, Carmarthenshire.

Bronze Poet by Innokenty Annensky

Clouds that whiten in a dome of blue

and twisted trees sharply delineated,

the dust aglow, each shadow elongated

and phantoms that pass through the heart anew.

Why was the tale so brief? I cannot say.

Was there a second half I didn’t know?

In pale skies the clouds dissolve away

and night roams through the blackened tree below.

That man, the bench he sits on in the dusk

are growing heavier and more grotesque…

Don’t move! For as carnations start to shine

and leafy bushes melt and intertwine,

the poet shakes away his uniform

of tired bronze and prings on the lawn.

 

by Иннокентий Фёдорович Анненский (Innokenty Fyodorovich Annensky)

(date unknown)

translated by Peter Oram

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Fun fact: Annensky is thinking of a statue of Pushkin in the Lycee Garden in Tsarkoye Selo.

‘Though we have parted, on my breast’ by Mikhail Lermontov

Though we have parted, on my breast

your likeness as of old I wear.

It brings my spirit joy and rest,

pale phantom of a happier year.

To other passions now I thrill,

yet cannot leave this love of mine.

A cast-down idol – god-like still,

a shrine abandoned, yet a shrine.

 

by Михаил Юрьевич Лермонтов (Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov)

(1837)

translated by Avril Pyman

Молчание (Silentium) by Osip Mandelstam

She has yet to be born:

she is music and word,

and she eternally bonds

all life in this world.

 

The sea breathes gently;

the day glitters wildly.

A bowl of dazed azure

sways pale foam-lilac.

 

May I too reach back

to that ancient silence,

like a note of crystal

pure from its source.

 

Stay, Aphrodite, as foam.

Return, word, to music.

Heart, be shy of heart,

fused with life’s root.

 

by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam. His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)

(1910)

translated by Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk

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Fun fact: This is Mandelstam’s variation on Tyutchev’s earlier poem ‘Silentium‘.

Recital in the original Russian:

Russian cyrillic version:

Она еще не родилась,
Она и музыка и слово,
И потому всего живого
Ненарушаемая связь.

Спокойно дышат моря груди,
Но, как безумный, светел день,
И пены бледная сирень
В черно-лазоревом сосуде.

Да обретут мои уста
Первоначальную немоту,
Как кристаллическую ноту,
Что от рождения чиста!

Останься пеной, Афродита,
И, слово, в музыку вернись,
И, сердце, сердца устыдись,
С первоосновой жизни слито!