Also in Poetry:

1. a la Roerich
Nina Kossman "....and an echo is hidden behind the cliffs"
Michael Kossman. Gravitation

 
Do not disturb the silence, do not awaken it with meaningless noise,

There is a law of the deep, unnoticed, forgotten in everyday life:

In every dark corner, in every rumbling gorge, a reflected depth

Is imprinted, and an echo is hidden behind the cliffs.

If you cannot see the sky, do not look for a solution;

You will find only your own reflection in the depths of the well.

If you haven’t seen the peaks, do not go in search of a ghost in the mountains;

If you have seen them, be silent, for an echo will come back as a shot.
 
      Translated from Russian by Nina Kossman
 
 
The Original:

ПРИТЯЖЕНИЕ
 
Не тревожь тишины, не буди ее звуками смутными,

Есть закон глубины, незаметный, забытый меж буднями:

В каждом темном углу, в каждом гулком ущельи впечатана

Отраженная глубь, и за скалами эхо припрятано.

Если неба не видно тебе — не ищи ты решения;

В самой глуби колодца найдешь лишь свое отражение.

Не видавший вершин, не зови с собой в горы за призраком,

А видавший — молчи, ибо эхо обрушится выстрелом.
 

New York, 1978

About the Author:

2 mika001-222
Michael Kossman
Born in Moscow, lived in New York

Michael Kossman was a poet, prose writer, translator of poetry from English and German, and literary critic. He was born in Moscow, where he graduated from high school and began his university studies. He emigrated from the USSR in 1972. He spent one year in Israel. In 1973, he arrived in the US, first settling in Cleveland where his father had a college teaching job, then in New York. He graduated from Columbia University with a master’s degree in Russian literature. He wrote amazing poems and short stories but was indifferent to publication and refused to publish his work. Most of his best poems and short stories are lost, as he did not want to keep them. He translated poems by W.B. Yeats (from English) and Hermann Hesse (from German) into Russian. He authored studies on Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” and on Zamyatin’s unfinished novel “The Scourge of God”. He was not only a unique poet and short story writer, but also a thinker, and his thinking often verged on the prophetic. He saw life and death so clearly, that in some of his poems written many years ago, he predicted his own death. He passed away on the same night and at the same time as his father, Jan. 22, 2010. After his passing, his sister found an envelope with a few of his poems and arranged for their publication.

Michael Kossman Михаил Косман
Bookshelf
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by J Rainsnow

In this collection of short stories drawing on years of unconventional living, the author dives into the deeply personal world of the imagination in search of tales and truths to support the foundations of a better future.

100 pms war
by Julia Nemirovskaya, editor

This excellent anthology, compiled and edited by Julia Nemirovskaya, showcases poems by Russian (and Russian-speaking) poets who express their absolute rejection of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

DesyatyjKrug
by David Gay

The documentary novel “The Tenth Circle” tells the story of the life, struggle, and destruction of the Minsk ghetto, one of the largest in the Soviet Union and Europe during World War II. (Russian edition)

22.Golden on Amazon(1)
by Charles Whittaker

Selected poems of Charles Whittaker.

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