I’ve checked out of my old life
and into a new
with a first-of the-month stipend
and a room with a view.
A one-room in Finntown
on the second floor
with a cubical fridge
and a sign on the door.
A self-contained kingdom,
a rarified hovel,
no shower to fix
or sidewalk to shovel.
Just a bed and a table
and a weekly let,
an ashtray and a remote
for the television set.
A blind for the window
when the cold morning’s break
but a clear view of the sunset
over Bailey’s lake.
Whole days for drinking
while the counsels convene
and never once thinking
what I might have been.
~ ~ ~
ВОЗРАЩЕНИЕ В ФИННТАУН
Выписался из жизни старой,
И в новую прописался,
комната с видом, пособие даром,
остальное меня не касается.
В Финнтауне комната целая
на втором этаже,
куб холодильника белый,
на двери табличка уже.
Чем не царство и благодать,
редкостная дыра,
Нет ванной – нечего починять,
Снег не сгребаю с утра.
Кровать, стол, стул,
просто, зато не тесно,
телевизионный пульт
достаю, не вставая с места.
Скрывая рассвет холодный,
на окнax шторы висят,
а вечером, вход свободный –
над озером Бейли закат.
Пока соц. работникам судьбы решать,
могу пить, хоть целый день,
а кем я мог бы в той жизни стать
мне даже и думать лень.
Translated into Russian by Marina Eskin
Wayne Pernu is an American poet who grew up in Minnesota and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
Marina Eskin was born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). She is a physicist by training. Marina is the author of four books of poetry in Russian, her texts and translations appear in various print and online publications. She is a member of the editorial board of “Interpoesia” journal.
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)