* * *
Hey, I found a girl! I found a girl!
Her nose, a nimble hose, can twist and twirl,
For a mouth she has a rubber sheet,
Her eyepieces are clogged with soil and sleet.
I feel like hugging her right then and there,
But she gives me such an eerie stare…
And l see her eyes, big, blank and round,
And I hear her burble, “beat it, now!”
And her belly swells, and swells, and swells,
Though already bloated like a bell!
“Feed me!” she commands, and off I skip
Plucking grass on the disputed strip.
“I am hungry!” – still, she swells and bloats.
And I bring her houses, people, goats,
Music notebooks, pupils of my eyes –
To this girl with her rust-eaten scythe.
She pulls out the safety pin and grieves
Gobbling up a man. I cannot leave.
Looming like a swarm of wasps, she nears,
The gigantic girl who knows no tears.
The Original
Девочку я, девочку нашла!
Носик у неё — подвижный шланг,
Ротик у неё — резины пласт,
В окулярах глаз — земля и наст.
Захотелось девочку обнять,
А она так смотрит на меня…
И я вижу, вместо глаз — круги,
И я слышу булькает: «Беги»!
И растёт, растёт её живот,
Пухнет, но растёт, растёт, растёт!
«Накорми!» — приказ, и я бегу,
Рву траву на спорном берегу.
«Есть хочу!» — и пухнет всё сильней.
Я несу людей, дома, коней,
Нотные тетради, свой висок —
Девочке с заржавленной косой.
Плачет, пожирая, сняв чеку
С человека. Я не убегу.
Нависает тёмной тучей ос
Девочка огромная без слёз.
After she graduated from the Gorky Literature Institute, she worked as editor of the social-patriotic television program Street of Your Destiny. She performed her poems in the Tchaikovsky Moscow Philharmonic Hall, the House of Composers, the Center for Slavic Literature and Culture, the Orthodox Youth Club, and other organizations. Her poems were published in various magazines and set to music. A collection of stories for children with disabilities was published. She writes prose and poetry. She also paints, draws, and engages in other types of artistic creation.
Mio Grand is a pen name.
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)