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Tatters of rock-crystal foliage
torn from the jittery night
by a garden light, shudder slowly
hiding their wind-driven fright.
The witchy Greek neighbor’s shadow
swings upward, viciously tall,
bird-headed, evil, stupendous,
breaking in half on the wall.
In the dry throat of a lampshade
a drumroll, a night moth’s unrest.
In a pickling jar vodka splashes
steeping with orange zest.
Darkness colluding with emptiness,
Sweet bitterness making mischief.
Into the present continuous
Eternity sneaks like a thief.
~~~
Лампа в саду вырывает
ночи испуганной клок
со слюдяною листвою,
прячущей ветреный вздрог.
Злобной старухи-гречанки
птицеголовая тень
вымахнет ростом отчаянным,
переломившись у стен.
В горле сухом абажура
гулкая дробь мотылька.
На апельсинных кожурках
водка внутри бутылька.
Сладкая горечь проказит,
тьма с пустотой заодно.
Вечность в мгновенье пролазит,
словно воришка в окно.
Valery Chereshnya was born in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1948, and now lives in St. Petersburg, Russia. He has authored five collections of poetry (among them “Recognition”, 2018), a book of essays “A View from Himself”, as well as many other publications in major Russian literary magazines.
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).
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)
