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Defend yourself! They’re woodcutters,
those whistling axes
moving my tongue.
Watch out!
Sickles of evil winds
biting my soul.
You,
tower of distrust.
You, tower of gold, greed.
Wall up your windows.
Better yet, look.
Men devastated, still,
in the fallen cities.
Ask them.
Better yet, listen.
A sky, green with envy,
overflows from my mouth and sings.
I, a sky…
Neither look nor listen. I…
Wall up your windows.*
*
ЗАВИСТЛИВЫЙ АНГЕЛ
Защищайся! — это дровосеки
свистящими топорами
двигают моим языком.
Берегись!
Это серпы злых ветров
кромсают мою душу.
Ты,
крепость недоверия,
Ты, крепость из золота и жадности.
Зашторь окна.
Или нет, смотри.
Опустошенные, неподвижные люди
в разрушенных городах.
У них спроси.
Или нет, слушай.
Небо, зеленое от зависти,
льётся из моего рта и поет.
Я, небо …
Нет, не слушай и не смотри. Я…
Зашторь окна.
Russian translation by Nina Kossman
*
The original
EL ÁNGEL ENVIDIOSO
Leñadoras son, ¡defiéndete!,
esas silbadoras hachas
que mueven mi lengua.
Hoces de los vientos malos,
¡alerta!,
que muerden mi alma.
Torre de desconfianza,
tú.
Tú, torre del oro, avara.
Ciega las ventanas.
O no, mira.
Hombres arrasados, fijos
por las ciudades taladas.
Pregúntales.
O no, escucha.
Un cielo, verde de envidia,
rebosa mi boca y canta.
Yo, un cielo…
Ni escuches ni mires. Yo…
Ciega las ventanas.
*English translation by Jose A. Elgorriaga & Martin Paul from “100 Poems by Rafael Alberti” (San Francisco: Kosmos, 1981)
Rafael Alberti (16 December 1902 – 28 October 1999) was a Spanish poet. He is considered one of the greatest literary figures of the so-called Silver Age of Spanish poetry.
This collection, compiled, translated, and edited by poet and scholar Ian Probstein, provides Anglophone audiences with a powerful selection of Mandelstam’s most beloved and haunting poems.
Four teenagers grow inseparable in the last days of the Soviet Union—but not all of them will live to see the new world arrive in this powerful debut novel, loosely based on Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.
Every character in these twenty-two interlinked stories is an immigrant from a place real or imaginary. (Magic realism/immigrant fiction.)
A book of poems in Russian by Victor Enyutin (San Francisco, 1983). Victor Enyutin is a Russian writer, poet, and sociologist who emigrated to the US from the Soviet Union in 1975.
This collection of personal essays by a bi-national Russian/U.S. author offers glimpses into many things Soviet and post-Soviet: the sacred, the profane, the mundane, the little-discussed and the often-overlooked. What was a Soviet school dance like? Did communists go to church? Did communists listen to Donna Summer? If you want to find out, read on!
