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Five Poems

December 5, 2014/in Gabo, Gabo, Winter-Spring 2015 / by Maxim Amelin, translated from the Russian by Derek Mong and Anne O. Fisher

Aesop’s Language

The language of Aesop eludes me,
and it’s too late to be taught a new tongue;
whether they’re villains, reprobates, or robbers,
I’m used to calling the powers
that be—with no provisos, no thought
for rank or title—by their actual names.
I won’t thin complicity among the many,
or inflate an individual shame.

Passer-by, be advised: give me a wide berth!
Only your feet now can save you.
For it is not the earth’s verdict
I’m calling down here—it is God’s.
When the defense and D.A. conspire
together, one witness gathers Himself
to judge: see His face flame with righteous ire,
see His robes effulgent with truth.

From the tree of earthly fear I eat no seeds,
from the waters of fright I’ve not drunk,
for this is Caesar’s portion I spurn.
I’ve filled my belly with other things.
So you, little whimperer, flee now!
Hightail it out of here, make haste,
lest animals swathed in sermon silk attack.
Your heels will feel the hot breath of beasts.

 

Every Day

Each and every day, save weekends and holidays,
when there’s no reason or special occasion
to leave my apartment and head downtown,
the same underground train—racing at insane speeds, its
unbearable rattling and grinding, screeching

and shrieking, clanging and clawing that’s fit
to flay my eardrums to the bone—carries us past
the exact spot between two stations, Avtozavodskaya
and Pavelstskaya, where a friend, not my nearest
or dearest, but a quiet man and loving father,

the kind that’s daily more endangered, always willing
to go drinking and a book-lover to boot,
the kind whose hard work never won him a penny,
Borya Geliebter (speak his name in your prayers, ye who live!),
was blown to bits in that explosion on the sixth

of February, in the two thousand and fourth year
of our Lord, on a Friday, at thirty-two minutes
past eight, as he was commuting in the morning
rush hour, without the slightest notion that he—
the poor guy, just fifty-four days shy

of his forty-third birthday—was slated to land
(oh senseless fate!) in tragedy’s messy center; and then
a host of thoughts comes into my head, from furious
curses—“Let those who gave this sordid order,
and those who (aware of their actions) still acted,

find no peace in this life or the next;
whether they rest in cold graves or hot beds may they
get no response, for a special retribution awaits their souls!”—
to humble thoughts of heaven’s hidden works,
which reason can’t fathom nor human dimensions measure,

since our births as men, our lives and ends,
reside in the Creator’s hands, who always calls
his blessed back with “Blessed be those beloved to me!”—
to vague ruminations on things foreboding:
how, if the philosopher of the common task is correct

and the resurrection requires numerical data, here’s where
you’ll find it, thus proving (despite a certain thinker’s bitter claim)
that after Auschwitz and the Gulag, after bloody wars
and revolutions, after Hiroshima, Baghdad and New York, there can be poetry…
but what kind? Who’s to say, maybe this kind right here.

 

In Memory of East Prussia

I.

Everything here’s alien: storks in their nests—
habit led each one here—
the everyday earth, the air’s everyday breath,
++++++ithe everyday water.

Formed by some separate kind of god
there’s this heaven, the fields sliced just
right, and a sun to scorch these winding roads
++++++iand kick up their dust.

Here the roosters sing off key, crickets
chirr improperly, and strange is the screech
of foliage, growing thickest
++++++ion oak, lime, or birch branch.

Built by bellicose Teutons,
an antique castle’s a cast-wax skull.
However much its emptiness saddens
++++++iyou, it’ll never again be full.

Of everything around me, seen and unseen, the one
deep law cannot be known—
so too did barbarians, astride Rome’s ruins,
++++++ithink everything alien.

II.

The ruin’s tongue is unintelligible:
the Livonian’s no longer around—
these countless lacunae stand out,
bright against the black background.

Both first sketch and final signature
emerge from under the paint—
sad denouement that hunts
you out, no matter what you want.

On the orphaned pedestal
falls a lone shadow;
There are finer points and details
we’re too lazy to dig through.

Cobwebs now cover
the pond’s dusty mirror;
as a mother mourns her sons,
so the sons their father.

III.

“As for the truth that one day we’ll die,
the trees here wept clear amber,
back when nothing yet could portend
that those called out—i.e. you and I—
from the dark ether on God’s orders
would suit up for living…” The elegy’s begin-

ning is severed—but to prolong it, ah!
my head’s inspiration-less,
and I’ve not endeavored to drag line after line
for some time now. Gently a wave—
the Golden Fleece’s curly heiress—
floats the fossilized tears to the coastline.

IV.

For how many years has this clock-
face’s 5:30 been rusted fast—
++++++itime’s left the station.
Chronicler! Take up your coal and chalk
to mark the day more attentively. Dab your brow sweat.
++++++iAll other options

elude you. So quickly now, note this
little testament—just take it down, don’t
++++++itry to fathom it.
For the seagull’s shrill voice
greets everything that’s in the earth, or
++++++iby the earth begot.

V.

The sandy hills of the Curonian Spit,
seeded with dragon’s teeth, cleave
the sea’s elastic lap in two turbulent
halves; the Spit’s been seeded.

As usual the men arose bristling.
They awoke to discord, then strained
to straighten, like gnarled pines striving
against the frenzied elements; now they remain,

a thin strip of woods, overcast and sullen.
So it was, and so it shall be.
My blood freezes; I realize we’re kin.
I too was sown senselessly.

VI.

A bridge, nowhere-bound,
+++ispans a loathsome stream;
the waters ceased their babble,
+++ifeigning lethargy.

Not a single trail remains
+++isince there’s nothing to decide.
This spreading meadow’s still green,
+++iuncut by time’s sure scythe.

The shades take their leisure
+++iwith picnics in that vale;
wherever they gambol
+++ithey trample spring petals.

Memory and oblivion—two
+++ishores—make one.
I’ve not crossed the bridge,
+++ibut linger in-between.

VII.

An old photographer wanders, aluminum
tripod in tow, raking the beach vainly for one
who’d wish herself pictured against a horizon
of belted pines or crags of sand, but—as if to spite him—

no one’s to be found; nobody needs anything—
not the countless tourists, each equipped
with Polaroids and Kodaks—and it’s no staggering
aggravation, though regret, nonetheless, seeps

in. Shoeless, taciturn, he passes the trash-heaps
of people, dividing his feet between sand and surf.
He’s filled with sorrow, which is my sorrow,
leaving no tracks as he goes forth.

Of all gilded Apollo’s adopted sons
surely you’re the last and most beloved!
Abandon that tripod and photograph heaven—
the sea, the sun, radiating from its altitude!

 

“You Take Root in Earth”

You take root in earth; I trot blithely by,
humming some happy tune
++++++i(all by my lonesome) about how,
as your gold leaves fall, you grow
more irresistible, though you’re neither
++++++idead nor living.

You seek help, little misery’s daughter,
but what help, poor dear, might I provide?
++++++iThe death pangs attending
your final hour are just like high art, though
they refuse to be captured in sculpture,
++++++ispeech, pigment, or song.

You dwindle down to nothing,
while those buds, which bring no good
++++++ito fruition, sit fallow—
Are you the fig our Savior damned,
or the walnut that, well before Christ’s birth,
++++++iOvid cursed in a split verse?

 

“A Many-Throated, Many-Mawed, Many-Tongued Rumble”

A many-throated, many-mawed, many-tongued rumble
resounds, coming nigh, soaring high, casting wide,
to infuse each soul with horror, wrap it in fear like a shroud,
setting all, from the dead to the unborn, atremble:
What’s happening? What’s coming? What’s gone?

And the cosmos’ uncountable creatures now feel
a light on their transparent skin, transmitted
from an immutable mote, so tiny even a keen eye
can’t pinpoint it in the maelstrom of faces and events—
but it holds our questions’ answers, and our hope.

prose_section_divider

Языком эзоповым не владея

Языком эзоповым не владея,
потому что поздно учить язык,
нечестивца, вора или злодея
власть имущих – собственными привык
называть именами без оговорок,
невзирая на звания и чины,
сопричастности не деля на сорок,
не преувеличивая вины.

Обходи меня стороной, прохожий!
ибо только ноги тебя спасут, –
нет, не человечий на них, но Божий
постоянно я призываю суд,
где защитник и обвинитель слиты
воедино, свидетель – и тот один,
пламенеют гневом Его ланиты,
свет сияет истины от седин.

Я со древа страха земного зерен
не вкушал и не пил боязни вод
кесарю назло, как бы ни был черен
или бел, – иным наполнял живот,
посему, дрожащий, как можно прытче
от меня беги, не жалея пят,
а не то, напялив личины притчи,
за спиною хищники засопят.

 

Каждый божий день, кроме выходных и праздничных

Каждый божий день, кроме выходных и праздничных,
когда без надобности особой смысла нет
из дому выдвигаться в сторону центра,
с невыносимым скрежетом, скрипом, сипом,
визгом и лязгом, царапающим и дерущим насквозь

барабанные перепонки, на сумасшедшей скорости
поезд подземный привычно проносит меня
мимо того самого места, между “Автозаводской”
и “Павелецкой”, где моего приятеля, не из близких,
тихого человека и семьянина, каких ещё поискать,

собутыльника мирового и страстного книжника,
ни гроша не стяжавшего честным себе трудом,
Борю Гелибтера (помяни в молитвах имя его, живущий!)
разорвало в куски во время взрыва шестого
февраля две тыщи четвёртого года от Рождества

Христова, в пятницу, в тридцать две минуты девятого,
едущего на работу в утренний час пик,
не подозревая, что ему, бедолаге, за пятьдесят четыре
дня до сорокатрёхлетия в самое средоточье
угодить (о случайность бессмысленная!) суждено,

и приходят мне в голову то проклятия гневные:
“Тем, кто отдал, не дрогнув, страшный приказ, и тем,
кто, сознавая и ведая, что творит, исполнил,
пусть не будет покоя ни на том, ни на этом свете,
ни в холодных могилах, ни в жарких постелях телам

их не спится, а душам готовится кара сугубая!” —
то смиренные мысли о том, что непостижим
человеческому разумению небесный промысел тайный
и к нему подступаться с мерой земной бесполезно,
что рождение смертных, жизнь и кончина в руках

у Творца, всех блаженных Своих обратно зовущего:
“Да пребудет благословен возлюбленный мной!” —
то предчувствия смутные, мол, если общего дела
философ окажется прав и точнейших данных
для грядущего воскрешения понадобится цифирь,

можно будет её почерпнуть отсюда, и в опровержение
горьких слов иного мыслителя доказать,
что поэзия после Освенцима и ГУЛАГа, кровавых
революций и войн, Хиросимы, Багдада, Нью-Йорка
может быть, но какой? — кто знает, — возможно, такой.

 

ПАМЯТИ ВОСТОЧНОЙ ПРУССИИ

I

Здесь все чужое: аисты на гнездах,
привычкой занесенные сюда,
обычная земля, обычный воздух,
++++++iобычная вода.

Сотворены другим каким-то богом
и небеса, и дольние поля,
и солнце, по извилистым дорогам
++++++iпылящее, паля.

Здесь петухи поют не так, не этак
кузнечики стрекочут, странен скрип
густой листвой отягощенных веток
++++++iдубов, берез и лип.

Основанный воинственным тевтоном
старинный замок – череп восковой.
как ни тоскуй о безвременьи оном,
++++++iне сганет головой.

Всего, что зримо мне и что незримо,
таинственный закон непостижим, –
так варвару среди развалин Рима
++++++iказалось все чужим.

II

Язык руин не внятен:
ливон не вышел вон, –
немало белых пятен
легло на черный фон.

Проступят из-под краски
и надпись и чертеж, –
трагической развязки
дождешься – ждешь не ждешь.

Стоит на пьедестале
осиротелом тень;
в подробности, в детали
вникать, вдаваться лень.

Затянет паутина
зерцало озерца,
но матери без сына,
что сыну без отца.

III

“О том, что мы когда-нибудь умрем,
деревья здесь рыдали янтарем,
когда еще ничто не предвещало,
что вызванные из небытия
велением Господним – ты и я –
сберемся жить…” – Элегии начало

оборвано, – ее продлить, увы!
нет вдохновения, из головы
не тщусь тянуть по строчке и подавно,
пока выносит на берег волна,
курчавая наследница руна
златого, плач окаменелый плавно.

IV

Полшестого на проржавелом
циферблате который год, –
++++++iвремя выбыло.
Летописец! углем и мелом
дни, со лба утирая пот,
++++++iибо выбора

нет, прилежнее отмечай-ка,
не пытаясь понять, внемли
++++++iзавещаньице, –
то приветствует криком чайка
все, что в землю иль из земли
++++++iвозвращается.

V

Усеяны густо зубами дракона
песчаные горы на Куршской косе,
делящей бурливое надвое лоно
упругого моря, – усеяны все.

В урочное время по всем косогорам,
разбужены распрей, они прорастут,
согбенными соснами встав под напором
стихии безумной, – останутся тут

полоскою леса, угрюмой и хмурой.
Так было, так будет, – из жара да в дрожь
при мысли: на них несуразной фигурой,
на прошлых и будущих, сам я похож.

VI

Мост, ведущий в никуда
+++iчрез ручей смердящий:
говорливая вода
+++iпритворилась спящей.

Ни тропинки никакой,
+++iибо жребий брошен, –
луг, уверенной рукой
+++iвремени не кошен.

В праздник там, на том лугу,
+++iвеселятся тени,
разбивая на бегу
+++iчашечки растений.

Память и забвенье – два
+++iберега – едины:
мост не перейден едва
+++iмной до середины.

VII

Старый фотограф с треножником из дюрали
бродит по пляжу тщетно в поисках тех,
кто пожелал бы снимок на фоне дали
Бельта ли, гор ли песчаных, но – как на грех –

никого: никому ничего не надо, –
отдыхающих тыщи снабжены
кодаками, поляроидами – не досада
неимоверной, но сожаление – глубины.

Бос, молчалив, минуя свалку людскую,
он по песку одной, по волне другой,
полон тоской, которой и я тоскую,
не оставляя следов, ступает ногой.

Из сыновей приемных златого Феба
самый последний – самый любимый ты!
брось свой треножник, фотографируй небо,
море и солнце, блещущее с высоты.

 

Ты в землю врастаешь, – я мимо иду

Ты в землю врастаешь, – я мимо иду,
веселую песенку на ходу
++++++iсебе под нос напевая
про то, как – теряя златые листы –
мне кажешься неотразимою ты,
++++++iни мертвая, ни живая.
Ты помощи просишь, страдания дочь, –
мне нечем тебе, бедняжка, помочь:
++++++iтвои предсмертные муки
искусству возвышенному сродни,
хоть невпечатлимы ни в красках они,
++++++iни в камне, ни в слове, ни в звуке.
Сойдешь на нет, истаешь вот-вот, –
благой не приносящие плод
++++++iпускай не расклеятся почки,
поскольку ты – смоковница та,
которую проклял еще до Христа
++++++iОвидий в раздвоенной строчке.

 

Гул многоустый, многоязычный, многогортанный

Гул многоустый, многоязычный, многогортанный,
вширь раздаваясь, вглубь проникая, ввысь устремляясь,
души живущих ужасом полнит, страхом объемлет,
в трепет приводит всех от умерших до нерождённых:
что происходит? что исчезает? что возникает?

Вся во Вселенной тварь ощущает плотью сквозною
проникновенный свет, исходящий из ниоткуда,
из неподвижной точки ничтожной, зоркому глазу
неразличимой в круговороте лиц и событий,
но и ответы в нём на вопросы есть и надежда.

Translators’ Note

Our collaborative translations began as a novelty but became an extension of family. We started making them in 2009 when Anne—in Moscow on an NEH Collaborative Research Fellowship for three months—met Maxim Amelin, an “archaist innovator” of a poet, whose clever neologisms and classical leanings deserve to be better known in English. A scholar of Soviet literature by training, Anne had only ever translated prose. A poet and translator of Latin, Derek had no experience with Russian verse. And yet we were both game for a challenge, newly married and eager, we suppose, to attempt a union of literature to follow our union of love. So we set to work, slowly carrying one Amelin poem after another into English, using—in Jascha Kessler’s description of collaborative translation—a “method, which is really quite simple, and hardly a method at all.” Anne picked the poems, wrote the cribs, and glossed terms, tropes, and themes, festooning the poems like Spanish moss. Derek massaged the whole packet back into sonorous verse. And then we’d talk, and talk, and talk some more.

If this setup sounds like a test of marital communication, it was, at least for a time. While the Soviet satirical duo Il’f and Petrov, much translated by Anne, could complain that “writing together isn’t twice as easy, it’s ten times as hard,” how much more difficult is translating together, when there are three minds in the mix? Still, collaboration’s challenges are little different from those faced by any translator translating alone: what’s the line between sound and sense? There’s always going to be some nuance or artful consonance that will vanish, and as Joanna Trzeciak recently wrote, “translation is the art of choosing one’s regrets.” If we, as collaborative translators, are bound to admit and explain those regrets, we’re at least buoyed by a partner who comprehends and empathizes with the loss. And the final product benefits from two attention spans and two sets of eyes. To put it another way, we are the team of relay sprinters who’ve snuck into a marathon, pacing ourselves against life’s other exhaustions. In 2010, we became parents of a son. Now four years old, he speaks both Russian and English, hearing the former from his mother, the latter from his dad. If these translations are for anyone other than Amelin, they are surely for him.

D_Mong_headshotDerek Mong is the author of Other Romes (Saturnalia Books, 2011); the poetry editor at Mantis: A Journal of Poetry, Criticism, & Translation; and a doctoral candidate at Stanford where he’s finishing a dissertation on marriage in the lives and afterlives of Whitman and Dickinson. The recipient of fellowships and awards from the University of Louisville, the University of Wisconsin, The Missouri Review, and the Hopwood Program, he now lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and young son. His poems, translations, and essays have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Court Green, and (most recently) the anthology 99 Poems for the 99 Percent. Last summer, he and his wife—Anne O. Fisher—published the first English language interview with Maxim Amelin at Jacket2. He can be reached at www.derekmong.com.

A_Fisher_headshotAnne O. Fisher’s translations of Ilf and Petrov’s novels The Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf, as well as their 1936 travelogue Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip, have been widely praised. She has also translated the prose of Margarita Meklina and Leonid Tishkov, and—with husband and co-translator Derek Mong—the poetry of Maxim Amelin. Their Amelin translations, supported by an NEA translation grant, have appeared or are forthcoming in The Dallas Review, Cerise Press, Big Bridge Magazine: An Anthology of Twenty-First Century Russian Poetry, and Chtenia/Readings. Fisher’s translations have also appeared, or will appear, in Cabinet Magazine, Squaring the Circle: Winners of the Debut Prize for Fiction, and Flash Fiction International. She has a PhD from the University of Michigan, and now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and son. Her current favorite Russian children’s book is Vitaliy Bianki’s Сказки о животных (Fairy Tales about Animals).

M_Amelin_headshotPoet, critic, editor, and translator, Maxim Amelin is among the last generation of Russian poets to grow up in the Soviet Union. The recipient of numerous national awards, including the Moscow Reckoning Award, the Anti-Booker, the Novyi Mir Prize, and the Bunin Prize, his work has been translated into over a dozen languages. In 2013 Amelin won the prestigious Solzhenitsyn Prize for his contributions to Russian poetry. The author of three books of poetry, including Cold Odes (Холодные оды, 1996), Dubia (1999), and The Horse of the Gorgon (Конь Горгоны, 2003), as well as a collection of prose and poems, Bent Speech (Гнутая речь, 2011), he is also an accomplished translator of Pindar, Catullus, Homer, and other ancient and contemporary poets. He currently lives in Moscow. He is a member of the Russian PEN-Club and editor-in-chief at OGI, a leading publisher of contemporary literature.

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Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published the second Friday of every month.

Today’s course:

How to Kill a Cat, or How to Prepare for CATastrophe

March 10, 2023/in Blog / Meghan McGuire
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The Night I Want to Remember

December 16, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Sanaz Tamjidi
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From Paper to the Page

November 18, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Annie Bartos
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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Point Break & Top Gun Are More Than Homoerotic Action Movies

March 3, 2023/in Midnight Snack / Michaela Emerson
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Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

October 7, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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The Worth of a Billionaire’s Words

September 23, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Kirby Chen Mages
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Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

On Such a Full Sea Are We Now

March 17, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Jemma Leigh Roe
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The Russian Train

February 24, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Cammy Thomas
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Still Life

October 31, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Daniel J. Rortvedt
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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Our contributors are diverse and the topics they share through their art vary, but their work embodies this mission. They explore climate change, family, relationships, poverty, immigration, human rights, gun control, among others topics. Some of these works represent the mission by showing pain or hardship, other times humor or shock, but they all carry in them a vision for a brighter world.

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