Selected Poetry (Penguin) Read online

  The bloody chronicle,

  And so you find this family feud

  Incomprehensible,

  Mere names to you, the Kremlin, Praga;

  20You are besotted by

  Heroics in this bitter struggle –

  You hate us anyway …

  Is it because, our capital

  In flames, we would not kneel

  To him before whose overbearing will

  You could only tremble?

  Because we hurled into the abyss

  The idol spelling doom to all the sovereigns,

  And won with Russian blood deliverance

  30Of Europe’s honour, freedom, peace?

  You threaten us in words – just try in deed!

  You think the Bogatyr now keeps his bed,

  Too frail to fix his old Ismailian bayonet?

  The Russian emperor’s word now counts for less?

  Tiffs with the West are new to us?

  Our power has shrunk, we can’t sustain it?

  We are too few? You think – from Perm to Tauris,

  From ice-clad Finnish crags to blazing Colchis,

  From our beleaguered Kremlin’s towers

  40To China’s high-walled mass,

  That bright steel bristles will not flash

  As Russian might prepares? …

  Send us then, tribunes of the people,

  Your embittered braves:

  Russian soil can take more rabble

  Near those familiar graves.

  1831

  My Pedigree

  The Russian scribblers in their horde

  Have burst out laughing at their rival,

  Saying that I have noble blood.

  Look here, for heaven’s sake, what drivel!

  I’m not an officer, assessor,

  Or ribboned by heredity,

  Not academic, not professor;

  I’m of the Russian bourgeoisie.

  I well know time’s vicissitude;

  10Our aristocracy is young,

  For new creation is the mode,

  The newer – higher on the rung.

  A fragment of a withering line

  (And there are more, not only me)

  Of boyars from a bygone time,

  Now I am petty bourgeoisie.

  My grandfather did not sell blinis,

  Polish the footwear of the tsar,

  Rise from Ukrainian serf to prince,

  20Sing in the court’s appointed choir,

  Desert, to wear a Russian hat,

  The powdered Austrian cavalry;

  How can I be an aristocrat?

  Thank God, I’m of the bourgeoisie.

  My forebear Racha’s mighty flail

  Served Saint Alexander Nevsky;

  Ivan (crowned wrath) the Terrible

  Spared the lives of his descendants.

  Pushkins consorted with their tsar;

  30More than one of them won glory

  When Polish troubles called to war

  The bourgeois Nizhny-Novgorodian.

  With all dissension and sedition

  And armed invasion overthrown,

  And when the popular petition

  Called the Romanovs to the throne,

  We Pushkins signed; the martyr’s son

  Showed us his generosity.

  Second were we those times to none …

  40Now I am of the bourgeoisie.

  Stubbornness didn’t get us far:

  Recalcitrant like all his kin,

  My ancestor displeased his tsar,

  So Peter executed him.

  We learn from this that arguments

  Are tiresome to authority.

  Rare was wise Dolgoruky, prince

  Of our submissive bourgeoisie.

  My grandfather, at Peterhof,

  50Took sides in the rebellion there,

  Supporting, though it was to prove

  His great misfortune, Peter’s heir.

  While the Orlovs enjoyed renown,

  My grandfather was in solitary;

  Our zealous family quietened down,

  Fate placed me in the bourgeoisie.

  I do not use the family seal,

  I’ve set those testaments aside;

  With new elite I never deal.

  60I’ve taken down the family pride:

  I’m educated, and a poet,

  I’m Pushkin, not Musin, not he,

  Nor rich, nor courtier, and I show it,

  My own man, of the bourgeoisie.

  POST SCRIPTUM

  Fiddlyarin, sitting there at home,

  Claims my black forebear Hannibal

  Passed, for just one flask of rum,

  Into the hands of some old salt.

  Well, this old salt was that great captain

  70Who brought us fitting cause for pride,

  Who gave, with mighty hand, our nation

  An impulse not to be denied.

  That captain loved my great-grandfather;

  The purchased negro, but no slave,

  Grew up to highest ranking rather,

  Tsar’s confidant, among the brave:

  The father of that Gannibal

  Who, also winning national fame,

  Brought about Navarino’s fall

  80When Turkish ships went up in flame.

  Inspired Fiddlyarin has called me

  A bourgeois nobleman. How neat!

  What is his line – who is he?

  … A nobleman from Bourgeois Street.

  1831

  For the Album of Princess Anna Abamelek

  Boldly, long ago

  I made a fuss of you,

  You were a wondrous child.

  Now you have grown, and bloom,

  Again I am beguiled;

  And with a nanny’s pride

  I fix my eyes on you,

  Worshipping, inside,

  The glory that is you.

  1832

  The Beauty

  She is all harmony, all wonder,

  Above the world and passion;

  Shyly she rests in her exalted beauty;

  And when she looks about her,

  She has no rivals and no friends;

  The pallid circle of our beauties

  Vanishes in her splendour.

  Wherever it is you may be hurrying,

  Even to meet a loved one,

  10Whatever cherished dream you carry

  In your inmost heart, –

  Encountering her, you are confused,

  You cannot help but stop,

  And venerate the holy shrine of beauty.

  1832

  Autumn

  (A fragment)

  What doth my drowsing mind not then conceive?

  DERZHAVIN

  I

  It is October, and the lingering leaves

  Are disappearing from the naked branches;

  The road is glazed, the cold of autumn breathes;

  The millstream still sounds loudly as it passes,

  But now the pond is hard; out in the fields

  My neighbour urges on his canine forces,

  The frenzied sport disturbs the winter crops,

  And sleeping groves are roused by baying dogs.

  II

  This is my season: Spring is quite the worst,

  10I hate the thaw, it makes me ill – stench, mire,

  My blood ferments, my spirit is oppressed.

  The sternness of Midwinter I prefer;

  How I love its snow, when free and fast

  The sled speeds on beneath the evening star,

  When she beside you gives your hand a squeeze,

  Warm beneath fur, fresh, trembling and ablaze!

  III

  And how uplifting, shod in fine sharp steel,

  To glide on crystal rivers, far from shore!

  The sparkle of a Winter festival! …

  20But snow, when it has fallen half the year,

  Inevitably loses its appeal,
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  Even for that deep burrower, the bear.

  One can’t forever ride with young Armidas

  Or mope by stoves in front of double windows.

  IV

  Beautiful Summer! You I should love best

  But for your dust and flies and scorching heat.

  You torture us, destroy our faculties;

  Like earth, we suffer drought, our only thought –

  How we can satisfy our raging thirst.

  30The passing of Dame Winter we regret;

  We saw her off with fruit liqueur and blinis,

  And now we fête her with ice-cream and ice.

  V

  Late Autumn is continually berated:

  That sentiment, dear reader, isn’t mine;

  I love it for its quietly glowing beauty.

  As to a child unloved by its own kin,

  I am distinctly drawn to it – yes, Autumn,

  Of all the seasons, is my favourite one.

  I am no vainglorious lover: truth to tell,

  40My love of it has something whimsical.

  VI

  How can I explain? It has for me

  Something of the quality you’ll find

  In a consumptive girl; condemned to die,

  Meekly the poor thing wanes, without complaint.

  On her thin lips a smile is visible;

  She has no notion of the yawning ground;

  Her wasted face suffused with hectic tone,

  Alive today, tomorrow she is gone.

  VII

  Season of melancholy! Eye’s enchanter!

  50How pleasing to me are your farewell hues –

  I love the finery of fading Nature,

  The trees arrayed in gold and crimson dress,

  The fresh wind soughing through the lofty verdure,

  The dense and darkly undulating skies,

  The sun’s infrequent ray, the early frost,

  And grizzled Winter’s lightly murmured threats.

  VIII

  Every year, when Autumn comes, I flourish;

  The Russian cold brings tonic to my being;

  In acts of daily life I take new relish,

  60So that sleep duly comes, and duly hunger;

  The blood runs through my heart in pleasant rush,

  Desires seethe – I am happy again, and young

  And full of life – such is my organism

  (If you’ll forgive a vulgar prosaism).

  IX

  My mount is brought; over the open heath

  It bears its rider on with flying mane;

  The ice breaks up beneath each flashing hoof,

  The frozen valley rings with solid sound.

  The brief day fades, in the forgotten hearth

  70A fire is burning once again – in turn

  It leaps, dies down – in front of it I read

  Or lose myself in lengthy spells of thought.

  X

  And I forget the world, and in sweet peace

  Soon I am sweetly lulled by imagination;

  With no preamble poetry appears:

  My soul is caught in lyrical commotion,

  It trembles, sounds, and seeks, as if in dream,

  To overflow in unrestrained expression –

  Here come an unseen multitude of guests,

  80Visitors from oblivion, fancy’s fruits.

  XI

  Into my mind ambitious thoughts come swarming,

  And rhymes race out to meet them on the way,

  My fingers ask for a pen, the pen for paper,

  And in a moment verses freely flow.

  So a ship sleeps, immobile in still water,

  But look! – the sailors scramble forward – high

  And low they climb, and wind fills out the sails;

  The giant moves, and soon she cuts the waves.

  XII

  She sails. But where are we to sail? …

  1833

  It’s time, my love, it’s time! The heart seeks peace –

  Day chases day, the hours and minutes seize

  Fragments of our existence; you and I

  Make plans for life – and suddenly, we die.

  There is no happiness on earth; but freedom

  And peace there are. Long have I dreamt of Eden –

  A weary slave, long meditated flight

  To some far realm of work and pure delight.

  1834

  [From Anacreon]

  A fragment

  I tell the steed of mettle

  By the brand upon his back;

  I tell the haughty Parthian

  By his stately tall klobuk;

  I tell contented lovers

  By how they always look:

  By the languid flame in the eye,

  Immodest mark of joy.

  1835

  … I see again

  That corner of the earth where two years passed,

  Quietly, of my banishment: ten years

  Gone by since then – and much has changed for me,

  And in accordance with the general law

  Has changed in me – but here I am again,

  The past enfolds me in its strong embrace,

  And it seems only yesterday I roamed

  These groves.

  Here is the place of my disgrace,

  10The house I lived in with my poor old nanny.

  She is no more – and from behind the wall

  No longer do I hear her heavy step

  As, watchfully, she’d go about her round.

  Here is the wooded hillock at whose crest

  I would sit motionless and contemplate

  The lake, how often thinking sorrowfully

  Of other shores and other waters … this

  Shining stretch of blue, encircling it

  Golden fields and lush green pastures: slowly

  20Over its virgin deeps a fisherman

  Drags his threadbare net, about its banks

  Lie scattered villages – and there behind them

  Crookedly a windmill stands, its sails

  Are scarcely turning …

  At the furthest border

  Of this ancestral land, just where the road,

  Churned up by rains, begins its uphill course,

  Three pine-trees stand, one on its own, the others

  Close by each other; past this spot I’d ride

  Beneath the moon – the soughing from their summits

  30Would always greet me. Now once more I pass them

  At that same hour, and there before my eyes

  Those trees again: they are unchanged to me,

  That soughing so familiar to my ear –

  But all around the ancient roots of two,

  Where all was bare before, now a new grove

  Has sprouted up, a green young family; saplings

  Cluster beneath their canopy like children.

  Still their grim companion stands alone,

  Like some old bachelor, while all around him

  Is bare as it has always been.

  40 Welcome,

  Newcomers to the family! Never, though,

  Shall I be here to see your mighty height

  When you’ve outgrown my old acquaintances

  And hide away their crowns from passing eyes.

  But may my grandson hear your sound of greeting,

  And, riding by at night with pleasant thoughts

  After enjoying genial company,

  May he remember me.

  1835

  The ready power of suffering

  The heart, I thought, had lost,

  Those days are long since over,

  I said, the past is past!

  Gone are the joys and heartaches,

  The make-believe and dream …

  But now I feel them stirring,

  For beauty rules supreme.

  1835

  The Stone Island Cycle

  From Pindemonte

  I don’t much care for
those resounding rights

  That take so many heads to dizzy heights.

  I won’t complain – I’ll just admit, the fact is

  The gods did not shape me for battling taxes

  Or parleying with emperors at loggerheads;

  To me it makes no difference whether blockheads

  Are hoodwinked by an unrestricted press

  Or censorship cramps wit to muted jest.

  All this, I have to say, is words, words, words.

  10To rights of this kind I have grown averse,

  Freedom of this kind is to me quite feeble:

  Allegiance to the sovereign or the people?

  Why should we care? To hell with it.

  By no one

  Held to account, to serve oneself alone,

  And please oneself, and breathe without delivering

  One’s conscience, thoughts or neck to power or livery;

  To wander as one wishes, take one’s fill

  Of nature’s beauty, perfect art, and thrill –

  There’s happiness! and rights …

  1836

  The desert fathers and unblemished women,

  To rise in their hearts to the celestial realm,

  To fortify themselves through earthly fear,

  Have fashioned many a memorable prayer;

  None of them comes to my lips like that the priest

  Says for us through the sad days of the Fast;

  Its power to raise the fallen is most holy:

  Lord of my days! Lethargic melancholy,

  That hidden serpent, lust for authority,

  10An idle tongue – keep all these things from me.

  But let me, O Lord, behold my trespasses,

  And not condemn my brother that transgresses;

  Instil into my heart humility,

  Patience, brotherly love, and chastity.

  1836

  Imitation of the Italian

  When the traitor-disciple dropped down from his tree,

  A devil flew to him, bent to his face, breathed life

  Back into him, took his half-rotting prey

  And cast the living corpse to Gehenna’s greedy

  Gape … The demons, chortling and clapping, caught