About the Author:
Wayne Pernu
Portland, OR, US
Wayne Pernu is an American poet who grew up in Minnesota and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
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 excellent anthology, compiled and edited by Julia Nemirovskaya, showcases poems by Russian (and Russian-speaking) poets who express their absolute rejection of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“Nina Kossman is equally at home in all genres of short prose: diary entries, mystical novellas, letters, autobiographical notes, and psychological sketches. She has good taste, a sober view of herself and others, and an innate gift for holding the reader’s attention.”
— Dmitry Bykov
This collection focuses on the war between Russia and Ukraine as seen by Russophone poets from all over the world.
Launched in 2012, “Four Centuries” is an international electronic magazine of Russian poetry in translation.