Solitude and rest
are the gains I know
from stooping all day
in the wind and snow.
The harsh northern gusts
by God’s own device
harry the man who chops
a hole in the ice.
A plank board roof
on a corrugated shack
tells what I own more
than what I lack.
What I lack is the wisdom
to know how God
will raise the dead at judgment
from a frozen sod.
And all the prophets
of the Bible couldn’t know
the virtues of waiting
for a bite in the snow.
Подледный лов
Одинокий покой —
все, что я найду,
горбясь под снегом
у лунки на льду.
Ветром промозглым
Господня рука
хлещет нещадно
с пешней рыбака.
Дощатая крыша,
на стенах жесть —
на виду все, что есть у меня,
да не то, чего несть.
Несть мне мудрости
понять, как Господь
в страшный суд из земли
поднимет мертвую плоть.
Так библейским пророкам
не понять никогда
ожиданья поклевки
средь белого льда.
Translated into Russian by Dmitri Manin
Wayne Pernu is an American poet who grew up in Minnesota and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
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).
This collection includes poems written in 2020-2023. (Russian edition)
“The Lingering Twilight” (“Сумерки”) is Marina Eskin’s fifth book of poems. (Russian edition)
Launched in 2012, “Four Centuries” is an international electronic magazine of Russian poetry in translation.
A collection of moving, often funny vignettes about a childhood spent in the Soviet Union.
“Vivid picture of life behind the Iron Curtain.” —Booklist
“This unique book will serve to promote discussions of freedom.” —School Library Journal
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.
A new collection of poems by Ian Probstein. (In Russian)