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***
Truthfully rhythmical,
fearlessly grappling
clashing with the sky,
luring in the nostrils,
deeply placid. This,
then, is poetry. This is her
speech pattern. Costly
pyramids of words.
The magic of your speech
Rules me.
Ruins me.
The magic of your speech
mystically wobbles
like an undecided butterfly.
Less like a bird. More like
a bug.
***
In spring I lose
my mind, especially.
I am a vile,
beautiful queen in spring.
My Lord,
who wants me like this?
Me. I want me like,
like a brimming beer glass.
And no goddamn lies
will touch my limbs.
And no sweaty chest
will convince me otherwise!
Because I am Beauty.
Because in the spring
I speak proud crescendos of words.
I almost roar!
My voice vibrates so much.
I need to love you so I
could torture myself and you
in the spring
with excessiveness
and demand excessiveness
in turn from you.
Halt your step. It is
My Spring.
***
Wherever the philharmonic plays,
good
fine.
Seats next to a window, please.
And fill our ears with music,
cautious
like rain drops along water ripples.
Fail-less
soundless
infallible.
***
There was a tin cup
Upon a very light wood
Counter. Not aimless,
But ready to be painted
Into a proper, worthy
Composition on a white
Canvas in a lit studio.
The rounded ending
Of tin walls
Displayed calmness
Rhythmically exhaling
The emptiness of the cup –
Deep breaths caught at the
Echoing bottom and dragged
By a quiet effort to the
Edge of tin into foreign
Busy air – the sunlit, streaking
Abyss that only
Transported dust particles,
Because it recently dropped
A dead fly which now was
Drying on the counter beside
The empty tin
And streaming sunshine.
***
Home is where
I want to sit.
You, whom
I want to hold
under our important
lamp.
You, whom.
***
Mainly the hole,
The hole in the heaven
That spits out handkerchiefs
Like cherry-pits,
Only white. And they
Turn into white cherry
Blossoms on the way from
Heaven to earth. On their
Fall to this earth,
Where mists cover thoughts,
Where baby-rockers replace
Bandages. Where we labor
Over notebooks. Here, this
Landmark land. We own
Heroes. We chose reading
Material. We even fuck
Cozily. We even make lists
Of things we have done. The
Beautiful of us are into
Shapes, some – into colors.
Come, come, cherry blossoms.
Here, objects of ethereal
Aspiration. Oh, give us your
Lake. Lie folded in our
Pockets. More than anything,
Foolishness deserves us.
___________________________
Maria Chursina’s book “By Way of Writing” was published posthumously in 2001.
Maria Chursina (1969 – 2000). Maria was born in Moscow. At the age of 12, she emigrated with her mother to the USA, where she attended school and graduated from New York University, with honors. In 1991, she returned to Moscow, completed a two-year psychotherapy course and began working with patients. In early 2000, at the age of 30, she died. “By Way of Writing,” a book of her poems, written in English at the age of 16-17, was published posthumously in 2001, with Russian translations by Isabella Mizrahi. From a book review by Valery Chereshnya: “…. a reader will encounter an unusually naked, pain-inspired text that captures all shades of love – love of humanity and writing as a release from the painful and the most accurate capture of it. The most striking thing is that such emotional intensity somehow miraculously coexists with insightful reflection and subtle self-analysis.”
Launched in 2012, “Four Centuries” is an international electronic magazine of Russian poetry in translation.
Ilya Ehrenburg (1891–1967) was one of the most prolific Russian writers of the twentieth century. Babi Yar and Other Poems, translated by Anna Krushelnitskaya, is a representative selection of Ehrenburg’s poetry, available in English for the first time.
Young readers will love this delightful work of children’s verse by poet William Conelly, accompanied by Nadia Kossman’s imaginative, evocative illustrations.
A book of poems by Maria Galina, put together and completed exactly one day before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is Galina’s seventh book of poems. With translations by Anna Halberstadt and Ainsley Morse.
The first bilingual (Russian-English) collection of poems by Aleksandr Kabanov, one of Ukraine’s major poets, “Elements for God” includes poems that predicted – and now chronicle – Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
A book of poems by Yulia Fridman.
“I have been reading Yulia Fridman’s poems for a long time and have admired them for a long time.” (Vladimir Bogomyakov, poet)
