Sergey Netrebsky. Translation by Dmitri Manin

Also in Translations:

En6wYEbXMAI9hnI (1)
William Blake, "Satan Arousing the Rebel Angels" (fragment)
Sergey Netrebsky. Translation by Dmitri Manin

Войско демонов разбито.
Бродит ангел между тел.
Пусть лежат себе копыта,
Ненадолго прилетел.

А второй, немного дальше,
В поле лжи, у КПП,
Все отряхивал от фальши
Тех, что по другой тропе.

После плакали. Смеялись.
О своем, не про вчера.
Даже до утра остались,
Почернели у костра.

И взлетели на квартиры
По рассвету вдоль лучей.
Провожали дезертиры
Их и тот, что был ничей.

Чудом выжил этот пленный.
Бог прибрать его не смог.
Он не преклонил колена
Ампутированных ног.

* * *

Mid the bodies walks an angel
Through the vanquished demon host.
He came down here on a tangent:
Let the hooved ones rest where tossed.

And another at a distance
Stands a catcher in the lie
On the other path, brushing falseness
Off the travelers passing by.

Afterwards they laugh and mourn.
Never mention what transpired.
Stay up late and talk till morn,
All soot-blackened by the fire.

…They ascended to their quarters
Following the sun’s first rays.
A no one’s man and the deserters
Saw them off with farewell waves.

The man survived mysteriously.
Spared by God, he didn’t beg.
He had never bent a knee
Of his amputated legs.

 

About the Author:

Sergey Netrebsky
Sergey Netrebsky
Zvenigorod, Russia

In this incarnation, Sergey Netrebsky’s first birth took place in Moscow in 1962, while his second one was in the summer of 1998 in a forest near Zvenigorod. Since then he has been busy with rhyming and conducting workshops on making toys from chenille wire. His book of poems “Forest Pierrot” was published in March 2021.

About the Translator:

manin_2021 (1)
Dmitri Manin
California, USA

Dmitri Manin is a physicist, programmer, and translator of poetry. His translations from English and French into Russian have appeared in several book collections. His latest work is a complete translation of Ted Hughes’ “Crow” (Jaromír Hladík Press, 2020) and Allen Ginsberg’s “The Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems” (Podpisnie Izdaniya, 2021). Dmitri’s Russian-to-English translations have been published in journals (Cardinal Points, Delos, The Café Review, Metamorphoses, etc) and in Maria Stepanova’s “The Voice Over” (CUP, 2021). In 2017, his translation of Stepanova’s poem won the Compass Award competition. “Columns,” his new book of translations of Nikolai Zabolotsky’s poems, was published by Arc Publications in 2023 (https://eastwestliteraryforum.com/books/nikolai-zabolotsky-columns-poems).

Sergey Netrebsky
Bookshelf
by Ilya Perelmuter (editor)

Launched in 2012, “Four Centuries” is an international electronic magazine of Russian poetry in translation.

by Ilya Ehrenburg

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.

by William Conelly

Young readers will love this delightful work of children’s verse by poet William Conelly, accompanied by Nadia Kossman’s imaginative, evocative illustrations.

by Maria Galina

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.

book cover galina 700x500 431792346_806631041304850_1823687868413913719_n
by Aleksandr Kabanov

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.

by Yulia Fridman

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)

Videos
Three Questions. A Documentary by Vita Shtivelman
Play Video
Poetry Reading in Honor of Brodsky’s 81st Birthday
Length: 1:35:40