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Poems for N[atalia] Е. Shtempel
I
Unwillingly clinging to a bare land,
With an uneven sweet gait
She goes—a little bit ahead
Of a swift girlfriend and her young groom.
She is drawn by the constrained freedom
Of an uplifting imperfection.
Perhaps a clear prediction
Clings to her gait, longing to stay:
That this spring weather
Is for us a grave’s foremother,
And this will begin forever.
II
Some women are kin to damp earth,
Their each step is a resonant dirge,
They are summoned to accompany
The risen and be the first to greet the dead.
It is a crime to demand their caresses,
And it is impossible to leave them.
Today — an angel, tomorrow — a grave’s worm,
And the next day—just a shadow . . .
What was a posture will be gone . . .
Flowers are immortal, the sky is wholesome,
And everything to come — is just a promise.
May 4, 1937
The Original
Стихи к H[аталии] Е. Штемпель
I
К пустой земле невольно припадая,
Неравномерной сладкою походкой
Она идёт—чуть-чуть опережая
Подругу быструю и юношу-погодка.
Её влечёт стеснённая свобода
Одушевляющего недостатка,
И, может статься, ясная догадка
В её походке хочет задержаться —
О том, что эта вешняя погода
Для нас — праматерь гробового свода,
И это будет вечно начинаться.
II
Есть женщины, сырой земле родные,
И каждый шаг их — гулкое рыданье,
Сопровождать воскресших и впервые
Приветствовать умерших—их призванье.
И ласки требовать от них преступно,
И расставаться с ними непосильно.
Сегодня — ангел, завтра — червь могильный,
А послезавтра—только очертанье…
Что было—поступь — станет недоступно…
Цветы бессмертны. Небо целокупно.
И всё, что будет, — только обещанье.
4 мая 1937
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From Centuries Encircle Me with Fire: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam. A Bilingual English–Russian Edition; translations by Ian Probstein. Academic Studies Press (2022)
Osip Mandelstam [Rus. Осип Мандельштам] (14 January 1891 – 27 December 1938) was one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century. He was arrested in the 1930s and sent into internal exile with Nadezhda Mandelshtam, his wife. Given a reprieve of sorts, they moved to Voronezh in southwestern Russia. In 1938 Mandelstam was arrested again and sentenced to five years in a GULAG camp in the Soviet Far East. He died that year at a transit camp near Vladivostok.
Ian Probstein is a poet, scholar, and translator of poetry. His most recent book in English is The River of Time: Time-Space, Language and History in Avant-Garde, Modernist, and Contemporary Poetry. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2017, Complete annotated edition of T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays (St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2019), Charles Bernstein. Sign Under Test: Selected Poems and Essays. (Moscow: Russian Gulliver-Center 2020).
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)
