There was burst of a rain here…

There was burst of a rain here,
Time has stopped.
The hours knock helplessly.
Grass, grow, you do not need time.
Dive spirit, speak. You do not need words.

August 12, 1937

-Daniil Kharms (translated by me)

Diner Parking Lot

More original poetry:

http://processingunit.blogspot.com/2008/07/diner-parking-lot.html

I thought long and hard about eagles…

I thought long and hard about eagles,
And I came to understand a lot:
Eagles fly among the clouds,
They fly without bothering anyone.
I came to understand that eagles live on cliffs and on mountains,
And that they’re friends with the water spirits.
I thought long and hard about eagles,
But it seems that I confused them with flies.

March 15, 1939

 

-Daniil Kharms (translated by me)

Aleksei Kafanov

A bloody trail meanders on the snow.
Someone has dug themselves, headfirst, into the snow.
What does he care about life and glory,
This individual slowly freezing in the snow.

Yet, unnoted in any report,
Having gone missing in ‘41,
In a raggedy overcoat and leg-wraps,
He still crawls in the night.

Dead, however knowing no peace,
He continues to crawl without direction,
The unburied Russian soldier,
Who never did hear the invaders repulsed.

Here he crawls before the dawn,
With dark, bottomless eye sockets,
He glances and demands an answer:
“The war, how did it end?”

-Aleksei Kafanov (Translated by me)

Blue Balloon

Blue Balloon

A little girl cries: My balloon flew away.
She is consoled, but the balloon flies further.

A young woman cries: I still can’t find a husband.
She is consoled, but the balloon flies further.

A lady cries: My husband left me for another.
She is consoled, but the balloon flies further.

Cries an old crone: I lived so little.
However, the balloon has returned to her, and it is blue.

-Bulat Okudzhava (Translated by me)

The Fifth

The Fifth

Love – it’s the fifth time of the day,
Neither evening, nor night, nor afternoon, nor morning.
You arrive while the sun is shining at midnight,
And leave in the middle of the morning night.

Love – it’s the fifth season,
Neither Autumn, nor Spring, nor Summer,
It’s not Winter, it’s what you want it to be,
And this depends solely on you.

Love does not bear a likeness to anything else in this world,
Neither childhood, nor old-age, nor youth, nor maturity;
Love is the fifth season of life.

1962

-Vadim Shefner (Translated by me)

I personally feel that this poem is a little hokey. If nothing else, I should have saved it for Valentine’s Day. Regardless it’s up for a reason, to balance out the steady stream of depressing works I’ve been posting lately. Enjoy. I rather like Shefner actually. People should go back to June and revisit Sinners.

Atlantis rots on the ocean floor…

Atlantis rots on the ocean floor,
The sea grows dense with silt,
Glorious Rome blazed in the fires,
Its grey ashes scattered over the earth.

Everything has its time,
Everything falls to pieces.
Yet, a new prophet appears,
Promising renewed happiness.

Moscow, Summer 1951

-Yuri Iofe (Translated by me)

In the Alexander Nevsky Monastery

In the Alexander Nevsky Monastery

The ghost of the sun sparsely illuminates,
The clouds and the monastery cupola.

The afternoon is muted, and it is infinitely sad,
To pass through the necropolis of art.

You, behold! Forgetting the vile malice,
Of the stone symphony of gravestones.

Except that symphony is silent,
Nothing escaped with immortality.

Summer 1952, Leningrad

-Yuri Iofe (Translated by me)

Zenkevich

Having read the news of battle,
I woke up at night, sweaty from terror:
I dreamt that I had lost my bread ration card.

April 3, 1942

-Mikhail Zenkevich (Translated by me)

Dream In My Sleep

Dream In My Sleep

1.
I screamed all night,
No one heard,
No one came.
And I died.

2.
I died.
No one heard,
No one came.
I screamed all night.

3.
“I died!”
I screamed out all night.
No one heard,
No one came…

-Semen Kirsanov (Translated by me)