4-8-2004
Юнна Петровна Мориц
Yunna Morits
(b. 1937)
Yunna Morits was born in Kiev. Her first collection of poetry, Talk of Happiness, was published in 1957. in 1964 she published a collection of translations of the Jewish poet M. Toif. With Joseph Brodsky, she was a particular favourite of Akhmatova’s. She has had a hard life: she suffered from tuberculosis, and her husband, a literary critic, committed suicide at the time of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Though regarded by many writers as one of the finest women poets in Russia today, Morits is very little published now, and is scarcely known abroad. She has been much influenced by Pasternak and, like him and Zabolotsky, has an animistic vision of nature. Her powerful, atmospheric poems about the Far North or the South, severe, utterly serious, with intimations of pain, of loss, of separation, are darkly moving. Her verses stir with the slow rhythm of nature. She is a poet of rooted attachments, measuring her love against the forces of nature. She is drawn to those men – hunters, settlers, fishermen – whose business it is to live and contend with these forces. The intensity of her work, its concrete, weighted depiction of the drama of the spiritual life as it is reflected or as it unfolds in nature, places her in the forefront of contemporary Russian poetry. from Post-War Russian Poetry, Edited by Daniel Weissbort,Penguin Books, London, 1974, ISBN 0-14042-183-1 |
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LINKS:
Poems in English |
O | O | O | O | O |
Biographies in Russian |
O | O | O | O | O |
Poems in Russian |
O | O | O | O | O |
O | O | O | O | O |
Ты - моя девочка,
Лежит она горкой
Стряпай, стирай, - она говорит
Вата на палке горит,
Пошел покурить.
Палтусом пахнет с капустой,
Так они жили когда-то
1992
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You are my girl
She lies like a small hill
Cook, wash, her eyes
Cotton wadding burns on a stick,
He went for a smoke.
He smells of halibut and cabbage,
So they once lived
*"Soviet folk"
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Приходить
домой, а там - казино или пицца-хат. На каждом газоне - свой президент и вице. При вате приватизации - кавалерист-девицы. Мэристо и префектно запахивая халат, пьет охраняемый член голландское пиво из банки, в это время по факсу ему сообщает фирма, что пипифаксу четыре вагона меняет Бирма на подводную лодку. Кровавый понос в Госбанке, деньги кончились, бобик сдох, казначею дурно. - Дерьмократы проклятые, мать их через губу! - выражается очередь, не умеющая культурно свое место занять в гробу... Клио, лично меня никакая помощь не унижает, но учти, что она не доходит, - полно ворья, все красавцы, все гении, все мозги уезжают, остаются такие бездари и дураки, как я. 1991
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You get
home, there's a casino or a Pizza Hut.
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НА ГРАНИ ВЫДОXА И ВЗДОXА
На грани выдоха и вдоха есть волна, где жизнь от видимости освобождена, упразднены тела и внешние черты, и наши сути там свободно разлиты.
Там нет сосудов для скопления пустот, и знак присутствия иной, чем здесь, и счет не лицевой, не именной, и только ритм там раскаляется и звездами горит.
На грани выдоха и вдоха есть волна, где жизнь, как музыка, слышна, но не видна. И там поэзия берет свои стихи. И там посмертно искупаются грехи.
1984
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On the Border of the Out-breath and the In
On the border of the out-breath and the in, is a wave where life is freed from seeming so, body and external traits are gone, and our essential natures liberally flow. There are no vessels there to gather vacuums, and the sign for presence is different, the account’s not personal, not nominal, only the rhythm, burning like the stars, is incandescent. On the border of the out-breath and the in, is a wave where life is audible, like music, but not seen, and it is there that poetry takes its lines, and there we posthumously atone for sin.
1984 (translated by Daniel Weissbort)
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ПОРТРЕТ ЗВУКАКогда неясный образ мне внушен, 1984
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Portrait of a Sound
When the dim outlines are suggested, I draw them with a pencil, listening intently To that line’s sinuous meanderings … Until the light of recognition dawns, Whereupon the portrait of a living sound, With a tender smile, is snatched from obscurity. Then, opening its blouse at the throat, Like a glass-blower I seize the slender thing, And breathe a living sound into this membrane. And the whole of my life goes out into it, Transparent, like a pure stream of air … And the sound’s surpassingly lovely face Is so irridescent, lord, and, oh, so clear!
1984
(translated by Daniel Weissbort)
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Если бы я знала в двадцать лет,
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If only I’d known at twenty years, How calamitous would be my lot, That I’d be deprived of such great blessings, I should have hoisted a white flag.
I should have abruptly changed my path, I’d not have stuck to it at all. I’d have changed both means and ends – And the guild would have commended me.
As little as ten years ago, Everything might still have turned out well – Is it hard if you know how? It’s not! But I went too far.
Fellows, I cannot stop it now. All I can do is be myself. If I should live until I die, That torn white flag will be my shroud.
And then you will utter such words, As will make my poor head spin … It’s not in the least hard if you know how! A dead poet’s forgiven all her sins –
Even unfortunate traits such as: A stubborn heart, when the going’s rough, Three eyes, By no means meek and mild, The truth she told about you once.
1985 (translated by Daniel Weissbort)
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ЯНВАРЬ
У нас такая синева В окне - от близости реки, Что хочется скосить зрачки, Как на иконе, как при чуде. У нас такие покрова Снегов - почти материки, Что день задень - в ушах звонки, И всюду голубые люди, И я да ты - ученики У чародея. Холодея, Стоим в просторах мастерской У стенки с аспидной доской. Зрачками - вглубь. В гортани - сушь. Вкачу, вчитаю по слогам В гордыню, в собственную глушь Ежеминутной жизни гам, Битком набитый балаган Без тряпки жалкой на окне. И все, что прежде было вне, Теперь судьбу слагает нам, Родным составом входит в кровь, Приставкой к личным именам. Сообщники! У нас-любовь Ко всем грядущим временам, Ко всем - до гибельного рва, До рваной раны, до строки Оборванной, где прет трава Поверх груди, поверх руки! У нас такая синева В окне от близости реки.
1967
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JANUARY
Such blueness blazes at our window From the nearness of the river We want to turn aside our eyes As on ikons or at miracles. Such shrouds, such continents of snow, To touch a day sets our ears ringing And people everywhere are blue. - And you and I, apprentices of the enchanter, stand and freeze In the spaces of the studio Beside the blackboard on the wall, With dry throats and piercing gaze. I’ll draw and scan, in arrogance, Each syllable, each minute’s life, To my remoteness; and the crammed Fairbooth, no rag to veil its panes – And all that was irrelevance Now shapes our fate, enters our veins, Stands as prefix to our names. Accomplices! our love’s forever, For all men, to the ruinous grave, To the torn wound, and to the line Unfinished: where grass springs, and stands Above our breasts, above our hands. Such blueness blazes at our window From the nearness of the river.
Translated by J.R.Rowland |
Южный рынок
Инжир, гранаты, виноград - 1966 |
SOUTHERN MARKET
Pomegranates, figs and grapes: How the words seethe, in verse or prose – There’s all the feeling, all the smell Of the Caucasus in their glucose. Every vessel, bucket, basin They curve and overflow and swell – How they torment our tongues with sweetness And tear the web of our attention!| Beautiful names – the names of fruit. The Lord Almighty named and hung them In his gay youth, that golden age, When their reflections swam in waters, Still hot, of the gardens of Urartu And Tavrida, that inspired Unheard-of notions into language. In his workshop blew the winds Slapping, mixing hot with cold: A serious angel puffed the fire, Kept house for him, prepared the food From samples. Together they drank coffee. All domesticities impede Thoughts of Golgotha: that I know From me own full baskets’ weight As to the marketplace I go Back with Georgian women, bent Under their dragging load of fruit.
Translated by J.R.Rowland
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The poems "January", and "Southern Market" were found in the book Post-War Russian Poetry, Edited by Daniel Weissbort, Penguin Books, London, 1974, ISBN 0-14042-183-1.
Воспоминание
Пилот, который летал надо мной, -
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A Memory
They threw the children from the burning train out onto the grass. I slithered and swam in a bloody trench of bone, gristle, guts.
The pilot who flew overhead, this scion of the brownshirt blight grinned like an invalid, finally out of his mind. He hovered in his airborne cage, pressed to the cockpit glass. I saw the swastika on his arm, the sweat on his brow, the rage.
And I saw, too, the red circle of the locomotive’s wheel. And fear robbed me of the strength to exclude everything I had seen’- because the engine was motionless, yet the blood-red fumes rose from the wheels, turning still, and the iron lever groaned – it was like an arm, crooked at the elbow, torn from the trunk it served, to keep the locomotive’s wheels posthumously going round!
This was in the fifth year of my life. The Good Lord rescued me for the long way that lay ahead… But in my blood, like mercury, is the dread that entered my flesh! And now, in the moon’s view, as I sleep, so wildly do I lament that the very wall where the memory is stored streams with tears. Translated by Daniel Weissbort
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Между Сциллой и Харибдой
Быть поэтессой в России – труднее, чем быть поэтом: единица женской силы в русской поэзии – 1 ахмацвет.
Ходим в люльке с погремушкой, Расцветаем, увядаем. Между Арктикой и Кушкой, Между Польшей и Китаем.
Покидаем с вечным всхлипом Облак над лицейским прудом. Между Лиром и Эдипом, Между Цезарем и Брутом.
Сохраняем здравый разум, Маслим свет над фолиантом. Строим ясли голым фразам, Между Пушкиным и Дантом.
Поднося фонарь к репризам, Связь находим колоссальной Между Блоком и Хафизом, Между Музой и Кассандрой.
И дыша гипербореем, Проплываем каравеллой Между Женей и Андреем, Между Беллой и Новеллой.
Но кровавою корридой Угрожает путь старинный Между Сциллой и Харибдой, Между Анной и Мариной.
Между Сциллой и Харибдой Между Анной и Мариной - Кто проглочен был пучиной Тот и выплюнут пучиной.
Стало следствие причиной Объясняю образ странный Кто проглочен был Мариной Тот и выплюнут был Анной.
Золотою серединой Отродясь не обладаем, Между Анной и Мариной, Между Польшей и Китаем.
И над бездною родимой Уж не знамо, как летаем, Между Анной и Мариной Между Польшей и Китаем.
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Between Scylla and Charybdis
To be a woman poet in Russia is harder than to be a male poet: the unit of female power in Russian poetry is one akhmatsvet
With a rattle we are walking Round the cradle, flowering, fading. Between the Arctic and Turkmenia, Between the Polish lands and China.
With a deep sob we abandon Clouds above the Lycée puddle – Between Oedipus and Lear, Between Julius and Brutus.
We keep our reason healthy, Dim the light above the folio, Make a crib for naked phrases, Between Pushkin and Alighieri.
Highlighting the reprises, We find a vast connection Between Blok and Persian Hafiz Between the Muse and Cassandra.
And breathing, hyperborean, We sail through, caravel-like, Between Zhenya and Andrei, Between Bella and Novella.
But like a gory bullfight, The ancient path is threatening, Between Scylla and Charybdis, Between Anna and Marina.
Between Scylla and Charybdis, Between Anna and Marina, He whom the gulf has swallowed, Was spat out by it likewise.
Consequences became a cause. I'll explain this odd idea: He whom Marina swallowed, Was spat out then by Anna.
In all our born days, never Did we command the Golden Mean – Between Anna and Marina. Between the Polish lands and China.
And above our native chasm - Who knows how! – look, we are flying Between Anna and Marina. Between the Polish lands and China.
Note: “Akhmatsvet”, a compound, derived from the names of Anna Akhmatova (the sound “akh” recalls the outbreath) (1889-1966) and of Marina Tsvetaeva (1892 – 1941). Zhenya, Andrei, Bella, Novella are Evgeny (Zhenia) Yevtushenko (b. 1933), Andrei Voznesnesky (b.1933), Bella Akhmadulina (b. 1937) and Novella Matveeva (b. 1934), popular public poets of the generation that includes Morits. Translated by Daniel Weissbort
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The poems "A Memory" and "Between Scylla and Charybdis" are from Modern Poetry in Translation New Series n.º 20, Edited by Daniel Weissbort, Guest Editor Valentina Polukhina, King's College, London, University of London, 2002 ISBN 0-9533824-8-6 |
Я с гениями водку не пила
И близко их к себе не подпускала. На
цыпочках не стоя ни пред кем, И более
того! Угрюмый взгляд И никакие
в мире кружева Так Бог
помог мне в свиту не попасть Не стать
добычей тьмы и пустоты 1979
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I never drank vodka with geniuses, And didn’t let them get closer to me. I wasn’t a young poet, I didn’t foster ears and fondle eyes.
Not standing on tiptoe before anyone, I didn’t shine, didn’t breath gloom, And didn’t ever waft freshness On those who trade in praise.
And more than that! A sullen view Of many entrancing things Pushed me out of all Pleiades, Out of the ordinary run, to put it no more crudely.
And no lace fabrics in the world Were strong enough to bring down mist And wreathe my millstones in gloom And the designs of my seething volcano.
Thus, God helped me no to join the suite Of any of the patriarchs of the Muse, Nor flaunt his love to my heart’s content, Nor forge laudatory alliances,
Nor become the prey of darkness and emptiness In a hall packed with admirers… Live on what only you will say, And not on what’s been said about you!
1979
from: Contemporary Russian Poetry, A Bilingual Anthology, Selected, with an Introduction, Translation, and Notes by Gerald S. Smith, Indiana University Press, Indianapolis, 1993 ISBN 0-253-20769-X |
CORAZON*
Странствий темный лес, Скоро из коры Здешние дворы 1992
*сердце, отвага, любовь, сострадание - многозначное слово (исп.). |
Corazon
Dark forest of travels, lightbeam of former lives, forgotten dream, from under the splash of root, blood-spring… the word I am hurt by: corazon.
Quick from the bark twilight spurts, sap, a fire-fly spark, sphere-starts, sand-stars, milk-drop stars.
Wind moves the courtyards here: olive trees, agaves, pines… Word that hurts so much on the ribbons of wind, windings of lines.
* (Sp): heart, courage, love, compassion, a polysemantic word (author’s note). 1992 |
На мокрой бумаге их птицы - на юге, Озябшие ноги где древние книги 1991 |
On dampened paper I sketch words in Chinese ink, where trees, transparent and bare, live in a snowy ravine,
their birds in the south, their leaves under snow, their branches in darkness. Chinese servants have arched over dreaming of warmth.
Frozen feet chime in the frost. Lantern dawn flickers on the road in Chinese uneasiness, inside spaces,
where ancient books shine in caves, gleaming, freezing, in the most hushed moments on the mental shift of those who have gone out into themselves.
1991 |
Нагие ветви за окном туманным, сугробы отливают синевой, столетие кончается романом Берлина сытого с голодною Москвой, нам подают, как нищим под забором, Европа нас боится, как чумы, - трещат ее Гранины под напором российских беженцев, которых тьмы и тьмы. От нашей мощи кровью моросило. Владыки необъятных площадей - мы самая дешевая рабсила, и в ней - богатство деловых людей. Все войны выиграли, всех завоевали, теперь, с такой же яростью молясь, мы будем деньги делать на привале между резней и вдавленностью в грязь. ...Не высыпай из пепельниц окурки, я научилась ими рисовать наш дым отечества и разные фигурки, в нем тающие, чтоб существовать. 1991 |
Bare branches through the misty window, snow drifts shot with blue, the century ends in a romance of sated Berlin and hungry Moscow. They give us handouts, beggars by the fence, Europe fears us like the plague, frontiers trembling under the pressure of Russian refugees, swarm upon swarm. From our strength blood drizzles. Masters of immense spaces, we are cheapest slave labour, making fortunes for businessmen. We won all the wars, defeated everyone, now, praying with the very same fervour, we will make money on the halt between slaughter and being pressed into filth. … Don’t empty the ashtrays. I’ve learnt how to use cigarette-ends to sketch our smoke-filled homeland and various minuscule figures, melting into it, just to exist.
1991 |
Утро, свинцовые крыши, 1991 |
Morning, leaden roofs, nothing to feed fantasies. Each of us not so much breathes as knows how to get by, to squeeze profit out of this terror, just try not to go nuts, despair is worse by far than torture – nothing to be used for love or to sleep. Children covet countries where the heat’s like in a frying-pan. Bananas, even bruised they covet, all, everywhere. Their grovelling makes each scrap a lash for us. Already I hate food and checking its prices. Children go out into the wilderness, because we’re all crap. Give each other prizes for your belles-lettres.
1991 |
Воздух зеленый, север восточной весны, солнечный ветер на скулах, в гулах окраин, в игольчатой дреме сосны. Много беременных, веки опухли, уста - Белое зарево яблонь цветущих и груш 1992 |
Green air, the north of an eastern spring, sun-bright wind on cheekbones, in rumbles of the suburbs, in the needle slumber of pine.
Many pregnant women, eyelids swollen, lips – their heavy voluptuousness a leaven – in shaking and trembling places are yielded to them.
The white glow of apple-trees blooming, and pear-trees flew past the window… Here bodies, deprived of souls, turn into souls, deprived of bodies.
1992 |
Туман развеялся, скопился свет
в стекле, 1991 |
Mist has dispersed, light collected in the glass, a bubble formed on the puddle, little hills melt. Cheeks painted with carrot and beetroot, the young lady flames, eyes like two gas rings, above where she stands a stocking whips a tree, filled by the wind. Lads in the square are persuading the young lady to come into the Civic Bloc, but suddenly, the tram opens its doors wide, swallows the citizens, public, crowd flies up onto the chimney, having bagged two meat coupons for its supper. The dark red sunset over Moscow stratifies, meanders. And soon we greet night in bliss and boredom, lovers on a sinking battleship.
1991 |
Дева разбила кувшин, и вода истекает, дети, рожденные девой, умножили скотство - средство похабной свободы, чье подлое сходство с чем-то возвышенным в воздухе пьяном икает, девью печаль на всеобщее сдав обожанье, на обнаженье, дрожанье, бежанье прозрачной, струйчатой... Дети ее сочетаются похотью брачной с нефтью, могучее нефтепродуктов рожанье, и среди прочих еще образуется голод странствий в далекое, хрупкое, из каталога, - ландыши там продают, и, поскольку расколот девий кувшин, покупают ей ландышей много. 1991 |
The maid broke the jug, and water spill out, children, born of the maid, magnified brutishness – the means of bawdy freedom, whose low resemblance to something sublime hiccups in the drunken air, having handed the maid’s sorrow over to general adoration, to baring, to trembling, the coursing of the transparent, the streamlike… Her children combine in marital lust with oil, a massive birth of petroleum products, and among those other the hunger still is formed for travel to far-off places, dreamy, out of a catalogue – there they sell lily-of-the-valley and insofar as the maid’s jug is smashed, they buy her lots (of lily-of-the valley).
1991 |
У него цыганская гитара, Виноградник вьется синеглазый, Листья пыльны, ветер любопытен, чтоб волна катилась, на извивах 1991 |
He has a gypsy guitar, he has a beautiful girl, oh, the song’s drunken wrapping is like a small cask’s tapping.
The blue-eyed vineyard twists onto the thicket’s cheekbones something foxy: however much you climb up under her skirts it’s the same – the more slowly, the more sweetly.
The wind is curious, the leaves are dusty, the skin on the bunches of grapes is musty, just you try to draw out this song, so the string does not sob and twang,
so roll the wave, still plaiting those little words on windings of melody – not for the timid, or for the finicky, but for the lives, which like candles are melting.
1991
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Скоро в Москве несчастной уцелеют одни
депутаты, им воздвигнут за это палаты, виллы и бизнес-сити. Боже их упаси возвращаться в провинцию, из которой они изъяты, чтобы речи произносити, в ступе воду месити. Раз в пятилетку или в четыре года уже за других голосами в урну пойдут голосите. Скоро в Москве останутся одни посланцы народа и народа штук двести-триста, чтоб то да сё выносите. Нельзя ничего раскачивать, плавая в этом сите. Главный цензор Кавказа Черкизов журналистам дает пососати орган его информации, - осторожно, не откусите, он и сам ведь охоч пописати. Конвоируя пыль при пассате, можно ли не рехнуться - такая идет засыпка?.. От нас улетают дети - куда им себя тут дети? Искусство, великолепное как золотая рыбка, ушло в анекдот, рассказанный в коммерческом туалете. 1992 |
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Soon in unfortunate Moscow only Deputies will survive, for whom they will build chambers, villas and biznes-parks. God forbid that they return to the provinces, from which they have been excised to deliver speeches and to mix water in a mortar. Once in a five-year period or four, already they’ll go to wail for others with votes in the voting booth. Soon in Moscow only the Envoys of the People will remain and two or three hundred items of the people left, so as to endure this and that. One mustn’t rock anything, floating in this sieve. Chief Censor of the Caucasus, Cherkizov, gives journalists the organ of his information to suck . careful, do not bite off too much, he himself’s got a yen to spill ink? Escorting the dust when there’s a trade wind, how is it possible not to go mad – such a cover-up going on?... The children are flying from us – what should they to with themselves? Magnificent art like a golden fish has gone off into a joke told in a pay-toilet
1992 |
Мы будем жить, немного
погодя... 1991 |
We will begin to live, a little bit later… First we will cross the river, then through the forest and on, everywhere, not seeing what’s in our sights, passing on, glancing into each gap, in food and water not finding… rustling from wind and rain, with sand in sandals that have tramped over Mecca, over that hill where in an ochre furrow a bush grows dusty, like a mummy humming, and at night a drunken comet is seen and the room and the moment where we will begin to live, a little bit later.
1991 |
Камни морские в стеклянной чаше лежат под широкой водой. Для человечьего глаза краше всё, что на дне и прозрачной средой залито... Мы их собрали за лето, ныряя за каждым во сне. А на вокзале-то, на вокзале-то было - как на войне, грузили обмороки, корзины, раздавленный тёк под ногами плод. Эта жизнь была из такой резины, которая лопнула через год. 1992 |
Sea pebbles in a crystal basin lie under broad waters. To the human eye all is lovelier lying on the bottom, flooded in a transparent medium… We gathered them through the summer, diving for each one in our sleep. And at that station, that station it was – as in the war – we loaded fainting fits, baskets; smashed fruit flowed under foot. This was life made of such rubber that within a year it had split. 1992 |
Роща звенит за окнами, Струится рука воды, Что остается после 1991 |
Outside, the grove chimes, as if the leaves were glass. Music of solitude. Transparent noise of silence. Autumn floats in strands of morning mist above the gargoyle swallows and farewells.
Fingers of water stream cold, silvery, flowing over my face, for now just glancing through banks of clouds like a swallow, drips the dawn, for now – like a feather along the porch.
What remains besides remembrance?... All diligent memory is false: the more detailed, the deader. But what remains beside the fear of God? Tenderness? Into the opening between branches, morning slipped its stiletto.
1991
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The last twelve poems were translated by Daniel Weissbort and Leona Medlin and are from Modern Poetry in Translation New Series n.º 10, Winter 1996, Edited by Daniel Weissbort, published by King's College, London, University of London, 1996 ISSN 0-969-3572 |
ПЯТЬ СТИХОТВОРЕНИЙ О БОЛЕЗНИ МОЕЙ МАТЕРИ “Полночный холод кислорода” ПАМЯТИ ФРАНСУА РАБЛЕ “В серебряном столбе” “И колокол в дупле часовенки пустой,” You can read these poems, here |