‘We’re All Boozers And Floozies Here’ by Anna Akhmatova

We’re all boozers and floozies here,

altogether a joyless crowd!

On the walls, the flowers and birds

yearn for clouds.

 

You sit puffing your black pipe;

smoke is rising; strange and dim.

This tight skirt makes me look

slimmer than slim.

 

The windows boarded up for good –

what’s out there? Lightning? Snow?

Like those of a cautious cat

your eyes glow.

 

What is my heart longing for?

Am I waiting for Death’s knell?

And the woman dancing now

is bound for Hell.

 

by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova)

a.k.a. Anna Gorenko

(1913)

translated by  Margo Shohl Rosen

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My Boring Lamp [extract] by Fyodor Sologub

Lord, if I am a poor and feeble

word slave,

sentenced to tedious labour

until the grave,

 

allow me to transcend myself

in one eternal prayer,

to compose eigth lines,

whose flame burns clear

 

by Фёдор Сологуб (Fyodor Sologub)

a.k.a. Фёдор Кузьмич Тетерников (Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov)

(1898)

translated by Robert Chandler

History by R. S. Thomas

It appears before us,

wringing its dry hands,

quoting from Nietzsche’s book,

from Schopenhauer.

 

Sing us, we say,

more sunlit occassions;

the child by the still pool

multiplying reflections.

 

It remains unconsoled

in its dust-storm of tears,

remembering the Crusades,

the tortures, the purges.

 

But time passes by;

it commits adultery

with it to father the cause

of its continued weeping.

 

by R. S. Thomas

from Later Poems (1983)