Four Poems

translated by Belinda Cooke and Richard McKane


We went out. But the scales inexorably sank.
Such cold scales of twilight,
the snowy hours slipped past,
circled on the stones and disappeared.

On the island houses did not move
and cold drifted solemnly over the waves.
It was winter. Doubting Thomas
placed his fingers in its scarlet sunset.

The tracks of heels in the snow
pierced like an umbrella spike, a stiletto.
My purple and frozen hand
lay like stone on the bench.

Winter drifted over the city there
where sadly we no longer waited,
just like the sky over its many towns
moves ever further into the distance.

(Belinda Cooke)

 

 

'How cold the public baths are,'
you said, and looked below.
The mist flew beyond the stone ledge
where the frozen carts were rumbling along.

Over the roofs four o'clock showed blue,
we went down to the iced up road,
and I thought to myself: I shall raise a cry now
like these boat sirens.

But I walked on further and made you laugh,
just like the condemned joke with their executioners:
the tram horse after rushing up, neighing
suddenly became silent and calm behind us.

We parted: well we don't always need to be ashamed
of the closeness that is already long past,
autumn that's passed along the embankment
never to return on their tracks.

(Belinda Cooke)

 

 

Ancient history is full of blue and pink stars,
of towers from which the dawn is visible,
of butterflies dreamily flying on the bridge.

Morning rises quietly above Rome,
and the shivering soldier walks along.
The polar ice glitters in the sea,
while high above the earth the nightingale sings.

So high, so deep, so far from the earth,
the white boat floats slowly in the mourning sky;
it carries the dead sun--we hear its spectre sing:

'The ice has warmed the air, and spring
has arrived. Anyone who dies on earth
will be happy today not to see how
there in the park the lilac blooms.'

How penetrating, deep, and far from the earth,
black pipes sing on the bridge, white flags
are raised high as The Roman forces walk.

The butterflies fly quietly above them,
and above every iron rain cloud.
The sun rises quietly above the statues:
New days will come.

—'Praise to him, who doesn't wait for the spring,
to the rose who doesn't want to live', the snake-nightingale
dressed in the moon, whistles in the pink park.

—'Sleep and wait, tsar-children:
midnight, leave us, morning return.
Everything will be just as we dreamed in the sea.
Everything will be just as we asked in grief.'

Eternity sings at dawn,
Nazareth prays in the roses.

(Belinda Cooke)

 

 

The sun was low, low in the sky
in the black world among black clouds.
The dead rays returned to the hills
in their gold grandeur.

Under the lilac in a muddy lane
a blue-eyed angel was dying,
and over him, returning home from a walk
a tender, drunk boy was guffawing.

What brings you, angelic children,
to cry on the earth among the lilacs?
You should have flown off
on a small wing early at dawn.

I remember, a voice called through
the pink twigs, which I'd often heard in dreams:
'It's late youth, return late, child,
the day is coming from the heavens like blue snow.'

The reflections of the stars freeze in the mirror
over the park – flowers in ice.
Smiling, the mirror lays out
the park in spring in hell.

The pink stars of indifference
carry you into the sky on the white day.
Only the angel did not listen to the boy,
he was looking at the lilac falling.

Each little blossom cross, flying past,
sang to him: 'Take me with you'.
Then it melted like snow.
It was the devil who took the boy home to the café.

(Richard McKane)

Translations copyright © Belinda Cooke & Richard McKane, 2005.

Boris Poplavsky was an exiled Russian poet who died a suicide in Paris in 1930. The poems translated here are all from his first collection, Flags.

Belinda Cooke lives in the north of Scotland and specialises in the translation of Russian poets. Her versions of Marina Tsvetaeva appeared in issue nº 61, and her own poetry has appeared in a number of magazines.

Richard McKane works as a interpreter at the Medical Foundation, and has translated a number of major Russian poets, including Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Gumilyov. His recent publications include Ten Russian Poets – Surviving the 20th Century (Anvil); Mandelstam's Moscow and Voronezh Notebooks; and his own collection of poetry, Coffeehouse Poems. He also translates from, and interprets, Turkish, recent books including work by Oktay Rifat and Nazim Hikmet.