You’ll
find short annotations on main points of poetry of poets on page for English readers
Poetic series
“Visiting card”
ELIZBAR ANANIASHVILI
translated by Andrei Patrikeyev
SUMMER MORNING
Old people rise early
Along with larks and the sun
When crickets fall asleep.
They wander through rooms
Shuffling and rustling
Pick up and put down things on tables
Their wide set sleepy eyes
Peering over the world.
The sun, the early morning sun
Warms their stooped shoulders.
Silent, old people sit at tables a long while
Leaning low over a plate or a cup.
Their large wrinkled hands break a bread loaf
Or carry a spoon to their mouths.
The sun, the summer morning sun
Lights up grooves on faded skin.
Why don’t I, the venturer, ask them
In hope and expectation,
“Tell me, old people, for the sake of
This quiet summer morning,
For the sake of the bright sun,
What poured liquid gold
Over the distant mountain range,
Where is happiness, your happiness and mine,
Was happiness left somewhere behind us,
Or are we on our way to it,
Or, may be, it lies
Somewhere far away, off our path?”
But I know they won’t say anything,
They won’t tell me anything, anything at all...
Deep inside their wide set eyes I’ll see
Wise owlish incomprehension.
LIOUDMILA VAGURINA
translated by the author
* * *
Among the ways unconsiously we choose,
not that – similiar with a Paradise,
but the unknown one all crowded with Grass
and maybe’ll call it – “Paradise”.
Among the million sands, which can’t be kept inside
your arms, a few are only used by Fate
to ornament its very nice design
by tearing off our souls to the end.
Among the rain drops falling on your face,
among the coins you keep for being luky
you see the way is long for long-long days
and covered all with golden Dust...
* * *
That’s the winter – all my viens are frozen,
and in the streets is never ending rain.
What there is – wild men’s shouts or
the skies are shaken with their lasting pain?
And you fly like stone of the sling,
and you cannot change a smallest thing,
only blood – the drop by drops together –
closely binds into the coral beads.
That’s the fire’s flame that undermine the eyes
or the tear comes into the eye and flies –
the ancestor’s stone is falling at the end
of the summer lightning nothing said.
OLGA TATARINOVA
* * *
I don’t consider Christ to be God
I suppose He was a son
I suppose He was a child
I suppose He was a man
who had loved and had hated and then
He had suffered had willed and had flied
by the spiritual wings of His mind
then He had agonized and had died
And I love Him I love you I love
And when suddenly I hate someone
in that moment I hope from my heart:
let these human being and everyone
would love Him and would love me and I
would find way to love him and all mine
in my heart which believes, hopes and flies.
TATIANA PATSAEVA
translated by Lioudmila Vagurina
NORMAL DISTRIBUTION*
’’ p(x) = exp(-x2/(2? s 2))/ ((2?
p )1/2? s
) ’’
K. Gauss
I’m looking at the bell of Gaussian curve
and see so stable and so tall it is
above the midst of human tribe – where chance
of being normal more than real is.
I'm cogitating how heavily, however,
it weighs upon the borders – its support,
on those, who are out of the crowd
or marked with sign, who are too great or small.
Who’re backing like the caryatids
the vault lest it comes crashing down
on stronghold of the earth abscissas
by sonorous and apocalypses blow.
And as far as my Lord put burden on
those both extremes, it seems
that negativity is one of basic things,
don't let the limited deny extremes.
Do Òíou see them: cripples, saints and
headsmen,
and sick creators that nobody recognized?
Tell me, my Lord, do Thou see extremes
and grant the leprosarium to them in Paradise?
__________________________________________________
* The normal or Gauss distribution law tells that the more is deviation
from average, the less it is probable. Corresponding chart looks like cupola with maximum
above the average and edges, that diminish to zero at infinity.
ALEKSEJ PROKOPJEV
translated by Andrei Patrikeyev
ANTI-FICHTE III
Seeing the king in the grove
one sees the maiden.
Squirrel-like scrambling a tree
a div, not a human!
whistle-like down the bark
flowing
amber resin
sweet Nausicaa,
barefoot over the sand...
One sees the king in the leaves
seeing the maiden –
but tell me what play
makes one see Eve
in his apple of juicy lips?
he has nothing to say,
all words have faded:
he wants to groom the croup,
he wants to breathe in withers,
or cherish the cherry,
he can’t, so what? –
one can if one wants it bad:
I don’t exist, the man says,
his eyes staring hard,
I’m not myself, the man says,
and he is right in his way,
I’m a pine, he says, I’m a birch,
and if one tries to talk back...
But you Nausicaa, you...
SERGEY NESCHERETOV
translated from Russian by the author
* * *
I watched a man
stand amidst the street
and devour his shadow with the eyes.
If that instant
they lay down at his feet the riches of universe
mixed up with valor and vice,
talent and passion –
he would grab all.
I felt he was insatiable.
Dreadful was it and beyond expression.
TATIANA STAMOVA
translated from Russian by the author
* * *
from courts and trials, troubles, ideas
men just can’t stand aloof from men —
children from parents
parents from them
near from dear
our own from strangers
friend from friend
enemy from enemy
(the foot of man
has stepped everywhere)
door from door
hut from hut
happiness from the Guest
doom from doom
alive from dead
dead from them
sinners from sinners
alive from alive
Merciful God, have mercy on us!
IRA NOVIZKAYA
translations by Bridget Kendall
* * *
so delicate
this ink drawing
that all around
is delicate to
* * *
footfalls from the street
slid
across my face
* * *
at night
poems crawl up
into my throat
* * *
each morning
the sky draws back the curtain
each morning
* * *
I kill time
and sometimes
it kills me
* * *
under the weight of the moon
the sky caves in
full moon
ANDREI PATRIKEYEV
translated by the author
* * *
It takes one voice
reaching up
through billowing smoke and dust
going down
to crystallize love
into that tangible ray of light
trying to live
when its source is crushed
with smouldering concrete
or a mortar shell
blowing up a boy on the bike
in front of his mother
60 years ago
(that woman would be my granny)
The ray holds on
its elusive weight
cements life
with death
unable to survive
peace and quick meals
|
