The Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multi-Lingual Texts
Five Poems
by Maxim Amelin, translated from the Russian by Derek Mong and Anne O. Fisher
These were co-finalsts in the competition organised by Antioch University Los Angeles. The winner and other finalist can be found at http://lunchticket.org/gabo-prize-literature-translation-multi-lingual-texts/gabo-prize-winners-finalists-winterspring-2015/
Because of my geographical location, I was personally moved by these, but all the winners are remarkable achievements.
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,
the 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
and kick up their dust.
Here the roosters sing off key, crickets
chirr improperly, and strange is the screech
of foliage, growing thickest
on oak, lime, or birch branch.
Built by bellicose Teutons,
an antique castle’s a cast-wax skull.
However much its emptiness saddens
you, 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,
think 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-
time’s left the station.
Chronicler! Take up your coal and chalk
to mark the day more attentively. Dab your brow sweat.
All other options
elude you. So quickly now, note this
little testament-just take it down, don’t
try to fathom it.
For the seagull’s shrill voice
greets everything that’s in the earth, or
by 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,
spans a loathsome stream;
the waters ceased their babble,
feigning lethargy.
Not a single trail remains
since there’s nothing to decide.
This spreading meadow’s still green,
uncut by time’s sure scythe.
The shades take their leisure
with picnics in that vale;
wherever they gambol
they trample spring petals.
Memory and oblivion-two
shores-make one.
I’ve not crossed the bridge,
but 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
(all by my lonesome) about how,
as your gold leaves fall, you grow
more irresistible, though you’re neither
dead nor living.You seek help, little misery’s daughter,
but what help, poor dear, might I provide?
The death pangs attending
your final hour are just like high art, though
they refuse to be captured in sculpture,
speech, pigment, or song.
You dwindle down to nothing,
while those buds, which bring no good
to fruition, sit fallow-
Are you the fig our Savior damned,
or the walnut that, well before Christ’s birth,
Ovid 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.
by Maxim Amelin, translated from the Russian by Derek Mong and Anne O. Fisher
These were co-finalsts in the competition organised by Antioch University Los Angeles. The winner and other finalist can be found at http://lunchticket.org/gabo-prize-literature-translation-multi-lingual-texts/gabo-prize-winners-finalists-winterspring-2015/
Because of my geographical location, I was personally moved by these, but all the winners are remarkable achievements.
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,
the 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
and kick up their dust.
Here the roosters sing off key, crickets
chirr improperly, and strange is the screech
of foliage, growing thickest
on oak, lime, or birch branch.
Built by bellicose Teutons,
an antique castle’s a cast-wax skull.
However much its emptiness saddens
you, 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,
think 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-
time’s left the station.
Chronicler! Take up your coal and chalk
to mark the day more attentively. Dab your brow sweat.
All other options
elude you. So quickly now, note this
little testament-just take it down, don’t
try to fathom it.
For the seagull’s shrill voice
greets everything that’s in the earth, or
by 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,
spans a loathsome stream;
the waters ceased their babble,
feigning lethargy.
Not a single trail remains
since there’s nothing to decide.
This spreading meadow’s still green,
uncut by time’s sure scythe.
The shades take their leisure
with picnics in that vale;
wherever they gambol
they trample spring petals.
Memory and oblivion-two
shores-make one.
I’ve not crossed the bridge,
but 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
(all by my lonesome) about how,
as your gold leaves fall, you grow
more irresistible, though you’re neither
dead nor living.You seek help, little misery’s daughter,
but what help, poor dear, might I provide?
The death pangs attending
your final hour are just like high art, though
they refuse to be captured in sculpture,
speech, pigment, or song.
You dwindle down to nothing,
while those buds, which bring no good
to fruition, sit fallow-
Are you the fig our Savior damned,
or the walnut that, well before Christ’s birth,
Ovid 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.