Just before daybreak, when darkness starts to reveal
the age of foliage, snow, grass, sleeping people,
glass shattered bloody, wounds beginning to heal –
don’t cry, my dear, it’s impossible to defeat evil.
At the hour when no one’s left to crow three times,
for the rooster’s been roasted and ended his days as food,
silverware stolen, Mein Kampf published and advertised,
don’t cry, my dear, it’s impossible to defeat good.
Dead birds hugging their nests are falling from trees,
dolphins are drowning, it’s the last chance before doom,
given to save us, but god disallowed lend-lease –
our immortality, yours and mine, is an equilibrium.
Hunger, death, devastation, fear, the original sin –
there is no axe to hack them, they won’t die,
and only love chomps up slime and filth, sucks it in,
but only love is your smile, only love will win,
and now, my dear, is the time to cry, to cry.
* * *
Перед самым началом утра, когда проступают швы,
едва подсохшие ранки, битое в кровь стекло,
возраст спящих людей, снега, листвы, травы:
не плачь, мой милый – непобедимо зло.
В час, когда трижды некому прокричать –
съеден петух на ужин, семейное серебро –
было украдено, вышел майн кампф в печать,
не плачь, мой милый – непобедимо добро.
Мертвые птицы, обняв свои гнезда, падают вниз,
тонут в море дельфины, это последний шанс –
дан во спасенье, но бог запретил ленд-лиз,
наше с тобой бессмертие – это баланс, баланс.
Голод, разруха, смерть, страх, первородный грех –
непобедимы все, нет на них топора,
и только любовь – сосёт, хавает грязь – за всех,
но только она – спасет, и только она – твой смех,
а вот теперь, мой милый, плакать пора, пора.
Alexandr Kabanov (born 1968) is a Ukrainian poet who writes in Russian. He lives and works in Kyiv. He is the author of fourteen books of poems and numerous publications in magazines and newspapers. Two books of his poems in English translation are available on Amazon: https://eastwestliteraryforum.com/books/the-age-of-vengeance and https://eastwestliteraryforum.com/books/elements-for-god/
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)