Natalya Gorbanevskaya: Selected Poems

by Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Daniel Weissbort (Translator)

Overview

In 1969 Natalya Gorbanevskaya was sentenced to imprisonment in a Soviet psychiatric hospital for her dissident activities; in 1972 Carcanet published Daniel Weissbort's first translations of her poems, with a transcript of her trial.In this new, enlarged selection of translations he returns to a poet who has continued, in exile, to engage with the cause of human freedom and the poetic traditions of her homeland. Anna Akhmatova regarded Gorbanevskaya as one of the small group of poets who kept Russian poetry alive. Weissbort, one of the leading translators of Russian poetry in Britain, expands our understanding of the continuing vitality of her work. An interview with Valentina Polukhina in which Gorbanevskaya discusses her life and beliefs provides illuminating context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847779472
Publisher:	Carcanet Press, Limited
Publication date:	10/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	180
File size:	238 KB

About the Author

Natalya Gorbanevskaya was born in Moscow in 1936. Expelled from Moscow University, she graduated from the Philology Department of Leningrad University. She was arrrested in 1968 for protesting against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Gorbanevskaya now lives in Paris, where until 2001 she worked for the Russian émigré newspaper Russkaya mysl. She has published a number of poetry collections in Europe and the USA since leaving Russia.Daniel Weissbort edited the magazine Modern Poetry in Translation, which he co-founded with the late Ted Hughes, from 1965-2003. He is Emeritus Professor, University of Iowa, where he directed the MFA Program in Translation. Currently, he is Honorary Professor in the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick. Weissbort has published numerous collections of translations and has edited several anthologies and collections of his own poetry, most recently Letters to Ted (Anvil, 2003).

Read an Excerpt

Selected Poems

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By Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Daniel Weissbort

Carcanet Press Ltd

Copyright © 2011 Daniel Weissbort
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84777-947-2

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CHAPTER 1

    From Poberezhye [Seaboard] (1956–66)
    On reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

    Clever, so clever,
    such clever people,
    not to be blamed.
    Such clever people,
    almost wise.

    Carbonised dust-jackets
    of books unread by me.
    Carbonised dust-jackets.
    And an illiterate stoker.

    Such clever people:
    – Burn! Burn!
    They claimed these books
    were his enemy.

    People access the ash:
    – So, rummage in good and evil.
    People have access to ash:
    – Look for happiness there.
    I sift through the ash,
    soot-covered to the elbow,
    sift through ash.
    Not one letter left.

    Such clever people,
    They've thought of everything,
    so others need
    think of nothing.

    1956

    * * *

    The fire in the oven's barely out,
    logs ticking over.
    The hour of truth has not yet struck,
    the crime's not been expunged.

    The day of judgement has not arrived,
    trumpeted over the sleeping hills
    to the cities, gifts still being brought
    from the impoverished villages.

    Chill blue smoke, over the house,
    suspended in the limpid air,
    and to those he doesn't know, through those he does
    the Lordly angel makes known his word:

    The crime has not yet been expunged,
    the hour of truth has not yet struck.
    logs in the stove still ticking over,
    although the fire's already out.

    1956

    * * *

    Morning. A lively wind. The woods
    agitated, each tree a spindle.
    From the hair, tangled webs.
    Each tree, an entire forest.
    Each tree, a home.
    Under each tree, our home,
    with table and couch:
    pale webs,
    tangled in the hair,
    clinging, clutching,
    fragile twigs,
    enmeshing the cones.

    Good morning.
    Let's with a sleepy hand
    disengage the webs,
    brush off grass wisps,
    dry the tears on your cheeks.
    No need to hurry,
    not the last time.
    In the wind-tossed forest
    a tearless eye.

    1960

    * * *

    Concerto for orchestra

    Bartók, listen to what you've written!
    Like beating a rusty frying-pan: rat-tat-tat,
    like mountains mounting mountains,
    rivers circling themselves,
    hands lengthening into tinkling reeds,
    long-muzzled boats,
    nudging white landing-stages.
    And the musician of the year before last,
    much admired, to judge from the price of tickets,
    sitting and frowning;
        but however many pans you scrape this rust off,
        it's always the same: noise,
        racket, not the real thing.
    Bartók, just listen to what you've written!
    Like ink spilt on a collar,
    knocking teeth out with a rusty pan.
    Again, the orchestra plays, under direction,
    and the public leaps up, and makes for the cloakroom.
    What a cheek! And, after, 'tee-tum' you intone,
    thank You, Lord, for sending them a lucid interval.

    1962

    * * *

    My Fortinbras, poor brother,
    behold this, my Denmark,
    sprung from my side,
    in my very image.

    And this, my game, behold,
    yours now,
    the path of virtue, with endless obstacles,
    mystery of being.

    Take all that was mine,
    or stop, wait,
    change your mind,
    Not yet king,
    depart, silence the drums,
    decline this role.

    1962

    * * *

    I'll fill the oil lamp.
    How lovely you are, my land,
    suspended in the gleaming heights,
    a basket woven by me,
    with the whole universe in it.

    How lovely, my land,
    like that other, by the bay,
    that half-mad willow,
    offering its branches freely,
    out of millennial love.

    My land, my light and strength,
    my destiny, how fine,
    how dark, my star,
    and Russia's misty name
    I was born to bear, from birth.

    1963

    * * *

    Why speak of disaster or beauty,
    when, naked as the thief upon the cross,
    the body, oblivious yet joyful,
    wishes to be deceived.

    Who laments and weeps,
    crossing the snowy frontier,
    where an icy wind
    chills the bright surface of a well.

    And this unearthly merging of passions,
    this breathless parting of hands,
    as on the cross, the snap of bones,
    as at the stake, the crackle and the blaze.

    1964

    * * *

    I do not chase rhymes, seeking glory,
    nor you, everything up for sale!
    Search as you might, hop, don't look round,
    like a sparrow on the Hermitage roof.

    A battle-tested sparrow,
    into the indomitable wind,
    over this absurd, wide world,
    like a boat among mountainous waves.

    1964

    * * *

        Don't touch me! I scream at passers-by
        who scarcely notice me.
        Cursing other people's rooms,
        I linger in anterooms.
        But who'll knock a window through?
        or hold out his hand?
        I am roasting over a slow fire.

    1964

    * * *

    Nothing – neither fear
    nor stiffening before the execution,
    I lay my head on the scrubbed block,
    as on a lover's shoulder.

    Roll, curly one, over the scrubbed boards,
    don't splinter those parted lips,
    the boards bruise your temples,
    the trumpet still sounds in your ear,

    polished copper dazzles,
    horses' manes toss –
    what bliss to die on such a day!
    .........
    Another morning and scarce a glimmer.

    And in the dimness, half awake –
    either some old fever or some new apocrypha –
    my lover's shoulder
    still has the tang of pine.

    1965

    * * *

    Unfinished poem

    To A. Roginsky

    Already past midnight, and
    every other street-lamp lit;
    wander about the town until
    dawn lights the sky.

    Night has erased the year,
    the age from the buildings' facades,
    the town, bleak as an allotment,
    but also like the Ark,

    floating and now entering
    the chill of dawn,
    and between the windows, near the gate,
    the age and time appear,

    and you come to yourself, weeping,
    on the bridge, over the Yauza river.

    1965

    * * *

    And mingling tears with the rain's sweetness,
    tasting the salt of eyelashes,
    I am happy. Really? Rouse yourself,
    the stars still wrapped in damp clouds,

    and in the dark heaven, only zones of moisture
    leave visible traces,
    iniquitous courts having banished
    the moonlight into distant exile.

    1965

    * * *

    On Twelfth Night, sings the cricket,
    a January Monday,
    and the pealing of the bells,
    floating among the snow-hills,
    barely, barely touches them
    with its wing.

    On Twelfth Night, the cricket sings;
    my visitor is silent,
    and the pealing of the bells
    drowns in the snow,
    melts in the sky,
    in cornerless space.

    But by the stove in a corner,
    the crickets chirp, like homunculi,
    while the bells peal, melt and drown,
    but touch us, brush us,
    with their wings.

    1965

    * * *

    Don't destroy me, Lord,
    losing me in a game of chance,
    sending me out to roam the world,
    believing in nothing.

    You who bestrode the waves,
    as if it were dry land,
    don't dispatch me, staffless,
    through the sift of earthly sufferings.

    Son of Man, who burdened me
    with a yoke and bell, free me not
    to wander the icy night,
    where my soul must freeze.

    1965

    * * *

    Love, what nonsense,
    what bird-brained foolishness,
    when it's already too late
    to spare or pity me,
    keep silent, silent,
    not inflating red cheeks
    in the familiar song of finches,

    where the poet,
    randomly traducing themes,
    imitates bird-cries,
    sighs and whispers,
    lips astir, infiltrating
    the dark communion of fish,
    and finally, a subterranean hum.

    Love from every part,
    food for verse,
    or the foolish song of mindless goldfinches,
    the crowing of roosters,
    keep silent, cease your babble.
    Let your hand stroke my cheek.
    How hot the fingers,
    and low the ceilings!

    1965

    * * *

    Denying love,
    to fall a victim to it,
    lifting the dark from words,
    like hands from a face.

    and to see the burst of light
    over town and woods
    like a Kyrie Eleison,
    or a March-Day slogan,

    a Mozart chorus
    over the ice rumble,
    like blissful cold flowing
    from the white hills.

    1966

    * * *

    Joyous Mozart with an oar,
    grieving Mozart with a sail.
    My tear-free cheekbones grieve,
    the ocular music dulls.

    Bitter, the mid-winter warmth,
    immersing me in a snowdrift.
    Joyous Mozart with a sail,
    grieving Mozart with a wing.
    Yet neither any headway makes –
    Splash oar, crack sail!

    1966

    * * *

    To Yu. Galanslov

    In the madhouse,
    wring your palms,
    beat your brow against the wall,
    as if face-down into a snow-drift.

    There, in the murky turbulence,
    smiling broadly,
    Russia stumbles,
    as into a mirror.

    For her son,
    a dose of stelazin;
    for herself –
    a Potyomsky escort.

    1966

    * * *

    You are my grief. Laugh then!
    A liquid moon twists me around.
    But that's not why I gulp back tears,
    like a mouthing fish, swallowing the chill air.
    Smile, my grief, pass me on the path
    where the frenzied woodpecker taps,
    and the mossy tower totters
    on its hen's leg.

    1966

    * * *

    In my own twentieth century,
    where are more dead than coffins for them,
    my miserable, forever
    unshared love,
    among these Goya images,
    is anxious, faint, absurd,
    as after the howl of jets,
    the trump of Jericho.

    1966

    * * *

    You howl, you weep ad lib
    on the green grass,
    and return to your slavery,
    mind numbed.

    You howl, weep, gulp back
    bitter tears,
    roll down steep slope
    into the nettles.

    And again return. How long
    to continue?
    Your palms tingling with burrs,
    sharpen your pencil,

    scribble a line,
    on your wrist, scribble,
    spot a blade of grass
    with a drop of blood.

    1966

    * * *

    Feverish and sweating,
    I am rambling about you,
    long desired and un-loved
    who's dear, who's not.
    I drop into an oblivious, nether world,
    where only the body speaks,
    while the wretched soul stays under lock and key.

    And in those depths, that darkness,
    you're like a mirage,
    and my voice calls softly.
    The hot pillow against my cheek,
    the cannon booming at noon,
    a deafness gripping my throat,
    a bitterness inundating my eyes.

    1966
    From Angel derevianny [Wooden Angel] (1967- 71)

    Just music, nothing else –
    neither joy, nor peace,
    in suffering's glassy sea,
    music – the one saving grace,

    for an hour or so,
    with neither yesterday, nor tomorrow;
    in the midst of winter, a flute sings,
    like the oriole, of summer.

    But this momentary oblivion ends;
    the human bird falls silent,
    and barefoot over shards,
    I re-enter the blizzard's sombre space.

    A star, an enchanting sonnet,
    nothing to beguile you any more.
    'Sleep peacefully!' but silently exclaim:
    'No peace!'

    1967

    * * *

    What is forever, what does 'forever' mean?
    In an antique clock water drips,
    in another, sand pours,
    but my alarm clock aims at the temple

    and wakes me – this time, forever –
    from the brief, coloured dream
    me, you, all of us, my friend,
    for an eternity, for new eternal suffering.

    1967

    * * *

    Preparing again to prolong his mortal span,
    cut short by the soothsayer's word,
    the prophet Oleg rejected the fatal horse.
    Again, the prince shed tears over the skull,
    from which the serpent, chortling,

    had slithered.
    Even with a hundred arms, mouths, faces,
    meeting a mendacious madman,
    no use putting questions.
    All bones rest in the Lord's hands.
    The scoop brims and foams,
    echoing the hissing snake.

    1967

    * * *

    As brought to bay, the deer falls,
    crushing the blood-stained grass,
    the exhausted day hurries towards night,
    a blind fugitive into reprisal's arms.

    O times, customs! Amid
    the deaths, the empty immortalities,
    forgetting, in her madness, names,
    she rants of Hamlet or Laertes ...

    1967

    * * *

    Curses! Joy! They write themselves!
    Words shift, like mountains,
    and, like a moth, I flutter
    between the lines.
    Only yesterday, at the approach
    of unbelief and sadness,
    as desperate as a stranded fish,
    I gasped.

    And now, each little stream
    burbles, like a goldfinch.
    The river flowing, its speech
    strumming against my cheek.

    Goldfinch! Cuckoo! Starling!
    In this female throat
    a vernal breeze floats
    between the lines.

    1967

    * * *

    Darling, darling, astonished,
    I see, above you,
    a wooden angel,
    with a wooden trumpet,

    silently sounding,
    a voice of desiccated wood,
    and I do not hear the word
    uttered by your desiccated lips.

    The other side of the thin partition,
    a trumpet voice moans;
    the angel flares, subsides,
    a coal dropped in the corner.

    The trumpet dies,
    tears dry in the eye.
    Rain streams down every twig,
    the astonished angel is silent.

    1967

    * * *

    Hold out a handful of snow,
    I kiss your hand,
    tell no one of these days,
    I neither weep nor grieve.

    Bullfinches in snowdrifts.
    How warm your eyelashes!
    A handful of snow,
    tomtits along the aspens.

    And the light, autumnal snow,
    pricked by grass blades.
    I scald myself with
    a handful of snow.

    1967

    * * *

    Forgive, forgive,
    always forgive me,
    that I cannot say good-bye,

    stammering as I run,
    moaning, sighing,
    waving a handkerchief.

    I do not speak, recalling
    what the tall grass felt like,
    and how it tasted.

    1968

    * * *

    My love, in what region
    – already I do not know you –
    what herbs are you gathering?
    and over a stream, by means of a log,
    folding the wings, on which
    you hurry to answer a call?

    Your forgotten sister,
    brought neither by wind or fire –
    sings in a dark prison-cell,
    she, too, folding her wings,
    falling silent only when
    the transport leaves for Presnya.

    January 1970, Butyrskaya Prison

    * * *

    The train's French horn sweeps on,
    an unattainable myth.
    A flame trickles through the bars,
    worlds eclipsed.

    The horn sweeps into the night,
    playing the tracks.
    How am I ever to reach
    that rainy platform!

    Sleepless, deserted,
    empty without me
    tattered clouds settling, like letters,
    onto your concrete,

    puddles with full-stops:
    hooks and tails;
    voices ringing out
    after the departed train.

    July–September 1970, Butyrskaya Prison

    * * *

    The savage cold of a Russian winter,
    my devastated pedestal!
    The agonising pain of this pose,
    myself seeking warmth, a piece of southern stone.

    Pygmalion has no love for Galatea,
    someone's easy laughter holding him in sway.
    In impotent silence, I rage,
    bleeding from the nose, gulping the frozen snow.

    February 1971, Kazan

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Selected Poems by Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Daniel Weissbort. Copyright © 2011 Daniel Weissbort. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Introduction,
Note on the Text,
SELECTED POEMS,
From Poberezhye [Seaboard] (1956–66),
On reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451,
The fire in the oven's barely out,
Morning. A lively wind. The woods,
Concerto for orchestra,
My Fortinbras, poor brother,
I'll fill the oil lamp,
Why speak of disaster or beauty,
I do not chase rhymes, seeking glory,
Don't touch me! I scream at passers-by,
Nothing ? neither fear,
Unfinished poem,
And mingling tears with the rain's sweetness,
On Twelfth Night, sings the cricket,
Don't destroy me, Lord,
Love, what nonsense,
Denying love,
Joyous Mozart with an oar,
In the madhouse,
You are my grief. Laugh then!,
In my own twentieth century,
You howl, you weep ad lib,
Feverish and sweating,
From Angel derevianny [Wooden Angel] (1967–71),
Just music, nothing else,
What is forever, what does 'forever' mean?,
Preparing again to prolong his mortal span,
As brought to bay, the deer falls,
Curses! Joy! They write themselves!,
Darling, darling, astonished,
Hold out a handful of snow,
Forgive, forgive,
My love, in what region,
The train's French horn sweeps on,
The savage cold of a Russian winter,
From Tri tetradi stikhotvorenii [Three Notebooks of Poems] (1972–4),
My Moscow, a waxen board,
Make haste, enjoy the oblique caress of the rain, the sunlight,
Drought, malevolent stepmother,
It was not I saved Warsaw then, or Prague after,
Investigating the herring head,
From Pereletaya snezhnuyu granitsu [Flying Over the Snowy Frontier] (1974–8),
Time to think,
Decrepit Europe, your second childhood looming,
Do not chase phantoms,
My dear, what's happening,
From Chuzhie kamni [Alien Stones] (1979–82),
This truth is a lie,
At that time, I fell for foreign poems,
He looked around, and his soul,
The untilled field is hemmed in the bonfires,
A year of dire predictions,
It got warmer and warmer,
From Peremennaya oblachnost' [Alternating Clouds] (1982–3),
This little clay bird,
From Gde i kogda [Where and When] (1983–5),
A poor fly in amber,
Epitaph (On the death of Vadim Delaunay),
From Sed'maya kniga [Seventh Book] (1985–90),
Notes for a discussion on statistics,
Where the pollen crowds,
From I ya zhila-byla [Once Upon a Time] (1992–4),
This phrase from the experts' diagnosis,
Waiting for the end,
From Nabor [Type-setting] (1994–6),
And my friend was sold for a bushel of wheat,
My head's badly arranged,
This groan of ours, this wail,
From Novye vos'mistishiya [New Eight-line] (1996),
7. The Russian language,
From Kto o chyom poyot [Who Sings What] (1996–7),
Exegi monumentum,
From 13 vos'mistishii i eshche 67 stikhotvorenii [13 Eight-liners and 67 More Poems] (1997–9),
The Russian 'no',
From Poslednie stikhi togo veka [Last Poems of the Last Century] (1999–2000),
My drink's neither hot, nor weak,
He Who let us sin and badmouth Him,
Time to stop,
Don't fear or grieve,
I don't see, hear, sensing,
We live ? at times,
Telegraph Lane,
Blessed is the epic poet,
On the long, long rue Vaugirard,
There she is, myself,
But I was always,
Man, made in God's image,
Hey, comrade lords,
Notes of a Cold War veteran,
And as children,
And sacred inspiration,
10 = 9 (In memory of the Oberiuty),
Words float either here or there, scurrying,
A citizen?,
From Pindemonti,
You realise, don't you,
And at thirty-three,
Words are out?,
I read the list of ships?,
On the snow-frontier, eyelashes freeze to a column,
Like a shattered embrasure,
And He suffered, and for a moment,
A rickety dog kennel,
It happened in August,
Rien de rien,
Enough to pass,
Who's forgotten and what?,
'?not awful to die',
No castles, parks,
Autobiographical,
And adding breath to the coal,
Self-parody,
Like a virtual hand-drill into a virtual wall,
from Another 13 eight-liners,
Don't limp,
Mile by mile,
From Poema bez poemy [Poem without a Poem] (2001),
Epigraph to the book Last Poems of the Last Century,
Romance,
Where it's not stamped down, measured,
The female sympathiser is certainly convivial,
If temples, cells and imperial chambers,
And correcting, improving,
A poem without a poem,
Dear inky one,
What can I not forget,
A cup, a dish, a spoon,
Yesterday's terrifying ferment,
With every passing day,
Nothing more, nothing less,
From Chainaya roza [Tea Rose] (2002–5),
Between the roofs,
Against the glass pane, a knife,
And former misfortune, they say,
In the August sky, a flight of stars,
How, where, whence,
In the pale, empty dark,
My mother was born in Russia,
from Military eight-liners,
What's he looking for,
Yesterday, the evenings,
from Square of discord,
From Krugi po vode [Circles in the Water] (January 2006–August 2008),
I exit at the Gare de l'Est,
What is it began to whisper,
Neither stubs of tails, line-ends, full stops,
Don't restrain yourself! Out with the truth!,
Lord, hear me,
No road worker can set Raspail,
Who is knocking at the brow, but from without,
Logs in the oven don't burn, but do warm,
Wherever you went,
I shall rake up on the wind, like a candle,
Snack on some medication,
By this overgrown route,
These waves, hillocks,
And Troy has not fallen,
What is relevant ? age, weight,
For the first time I feel sorry for the unwritten poems,
Malakoff,
Unbearable is a poem's eruption,
I go, go, don't whistle,
I know, know,
These places,
Is there nothing to read?,
Sometimes silence is like music,
Three poems about the rain:,
Somewhere, someone,
But music and in the deaf ear,
Walk without hurrying,
Like a shop assistant opening the store,
Two poems about something or other,
Search and you'll find,
Even so, into a noose, into heaven,
How few pinball machines now in Paris,
From Razvilki [Forks in the Road] (August 2008–December 2009),
Not trying to surprise,
Deaf and old,
In general I don't fear rain,
I live modestly, but quite well,
From Shtoito. Stikhi 2010 [Sumthing. Poems 2010] (2010),
I loved freedom,
Verbs pursue me,
The Language Problem of a Poet in Exile,
Address by Natalya Gorbanevskaya to the full editorial board,
meeting of Kontinent, Munich, May 1983,
Interview with Natalya Gorbanevskaya by Valentina Polukhina,
Bibliography,
About the Author,
Also available from Carcanet Press,
Copyright,