“Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
“But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
“I shot him dead because —
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That’s clear enough; although
“He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps,
Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
No other reason why.
“Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.”
* * *
Коль встретился бы с ним
В какой-нибудь пивнушке,
Перепились бы прямо в дым
Вдвоем, за кружкой – кружка.
Но мы лишь солдатня.
В сраженьи мы столкнулись.
Я стрельнул, он стрелял в меня.
Моей убит был пулей.
Его я застрелил.
Он был моим врагом.
Моим врагом конечно был.
Все ясно, и притом
Солдатом стал, как я,
Как тысячи мужчин.
Был без работы и хламья –
Других-то нет причин.
Война – такая дичь!
Подстрелишь там, ей Богу,
Кого б ты пивом угостил
Или помог немного.
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, he gained fame as the author of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). His first collection was not published until 1898.
Read more about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy
Liana Alaverdova’s poems, articles, and translations from English and Azerbaijani languages have been published in periodicals, in Russian and English, in Russia, Germany, the USA, Ukraine, Canada, and Azerbaijan. She has authored eleven books of poetry and non-fiction (popular psychology, literary criticism, memoirs, essays, and articles). She works as a Neighborhood Library Supervisor of the Kings Bay Library, one of the branches of the Brooklyn Public Library.
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)
A collection of early poems by Zabolotsky, translated into English by Dmitri Manin. “Dmitri Manin’s translations retain the freshness of Zabolotsky’s vision.” – Boris Dralyuk
A collection of essays and reviews by Art Beck. “These pieces are selected from a steady series of essays and reviews I found myself publishing in the late aughts of the still early century.”