“Mother dear, it’s Marchember whichever,
Year two thousand and I don’t know,”
Sergeant Poprishchin writes in a letter,
Back from the SMO.
Oil rigs burn, the sky’s diamond-starry,
death says: it does me no harm.
Tell it to the karamazov army
lying in the evenings on a farm.
Mother dear, your eyes are like dumplings.
The chief doctor says you’ll get a house,
just have patience, he grins
with his friendly – Moscow to Siberia –
dead man’s mouth.
~ ~ ~
Thousands of amputated legs, hands
awaken in heaven:
where are you, my friend,
my body – Volodya, Ivan…
They weave among the dead, the whole ones,
like asteroids floating round and round.
Is that you, Mom? Or a holy nebula
glimmering in a hollow nightgown?
There are towns and roads far below,
a ray of life through hell and agony.
Where hands and legs lie, gardens grow,
gardens rise from the earth, softly groaning…
The Originals
Матушка, мартобря, две тыщи
числа не помню, – пишет письмо
сержант Поприщин,
вернувшийся с СВО.
Нефть горит, небеса в алмазах,
смерть говорит: не худо мне.
Передай армии карамазовых,
что лежат в вечерах на хуторе.
Матушка, глаза у тебя, как клёцки.
Будет тебе, главврач говорит, дом,
потерпи, и смеется
добрым – от Москвы до Сибири –
мертвым ртом.
~ ~ ~
Тысячи ампутированных ног, рук
приходят в себя на том свете:
где ты, друг,
тело мое – Володя, Петя…
Плывут, огибая мертвых, целых,
как астероидные цепочки.
Мама, ты? Иль туманность божья
в полой ночной сорочке?
Где-то там, внизу – города-дороги,
Лучик жизни сквозь ад беды.
Над землей, где лежат эти руки-ноги,
с тихим стоном восходят сады, сады…
Sergei Solovyov is a poet, artist, and traveler, author of more than 20 books of prose, poetry and essays in Russian, including Feast, Book, Her Names, Man and Other, novels Amort and Adam’s Bridge. He was a laureate of the Russian Prize and Planet of the Poet Prize, and he was a finalist for a number of prizes, including the Bely Prize. Born in Kiev in 1959, he graduated from the Philological Faculty of Chernovtsi University and worked as a restoration artist of monumental painting in churches and monasteries of Ukraine. In the mid-eighties he created Noldistanciya, an avant-garde theater in Kiev; in the nineties he launched Kovcheg, a journal of art and literature. In 2000, he created an architectural project for a metagame labyrinth city (Germany). In the mid-2000s, he created Speech Landscapes, a club of free thinking, and he also became editor-in-chief of Figures of Speech, the almanac of contemporary literature, based in Moscow. In recent, pre-COVID19 years, he traveled in the hinterland of India, making films and writing books. He lives in Munich.
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).
A collection of essays and reviews by Art Beck. “These pieces are selected from a steady series of essays and reviews I found myself publishing in the late aughts of the still early century.”
A collection of early poems by Zabolotsky, translated into English by Dmitri Manin. “Dmitri Manin’s translations retain the freshness of Zabolotsky’s vision.” – Boris Dralyuk
A book of wartime poems by Alexandr Kabanov, one of Ukraine’s major poets, fighting for the independence of his country by means at his disposal – words and rhymes.
Every character in these twenty-two interlinked stories is an immigrant from a place real or imaginary. (Magic realism/immigrant fiction.)
In this collection, Andrey Kneller has woven together his own poems with his translations of one of the most recognized and celebrated contemporary Russian poets, Vera Pavlova.
This collection, compiled, translated, and edited by poet and scholar Ian Probstein, provides Anglophone audiences with a powerful selection of Mandelstam’s most beloved and haunting poems.