The Return (Возвращение), Konstantin Balmont

Portrait of Balmont by Nikolai Ulyanov, 1909

“I write non-stop,” Balmont wrote to the poet Lyudmila Vilkina in 1902, when this poem was written. “My love of life grows and now I want to live forever. You won’t believe how many new poems I’ve written: more than a hundred! It’s madness, it’s fantasy, and it’s something new. The book I’m going to publish will be different. It will raise many eyebrows. My understanding of the state of things has totally changed. It may sound funny, but I’ll tell you: now I understand how the world works. For many years [this understanding] will stay with me, hopefully forever.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Balmont#1900%E2%80%931905

My thoughts turn again to the village that bore me
And grove filled with limes and that quivering swing,
Where mist-wrapped the violets turned azure before me,
Where timid, unwonted, my thoughts were in spring.

I want to retrieve my lost softness and meekness,
Again be a child, or another at least,
By boundless and deep things consumed in my weakness,
Take seat at the snow-white-blue paradise feast.

And then, though I’ve loved all those reckless caresses,
Such senses I’ll always regard from afar –
The evening I’ll love and a child’s eye’s addresses,
And whispering stories, and once more that star.

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Мне хочется снова дрожаний качели
В той липовой роще, в деревне родной,
Где утром фиалки во мгле голубели,
Где мысли робели так странно весной.

Мне хочется снова быть кротким и нежным,
Быть снова ребенком, хотя бы в другом,
Но только б упиться бездонным, безбрежным
В раю белоснежном, в раю голубом.

И если любил я безумные ласки,
Я к ним остываю – совсем, навсегда,
Мне нравится вечер, и детские глазки,
И тихие сказки, и снова звезда.

Translation by Rupert Moreton

“The poems grow” (“Стихи растут”), Marina Tsvetaeva

Portrait of Tsvetaeva, Boris Shalyapin, 1933

The poems grow like heaven’s stars and roses,
Like beauty too – unneeded in my clan.
And for the garlands and apotheosis
There’s one response – how can this be my plan?

We sleep – and through the slabs of stone then flutter
The fragrant and four-petalled heav’nly guest.
Oh waken, world! In sleep the bard can utter
The law of stars and flowers’ treasure chest.

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Стихи растут, как звезды и как розы,
Как красота — ненужная в семье.
А на венцы и на апофеозы —
Один ответ: — Откуда мне сие́?

Мы спим — и вот, сквозь каменные плиты,
Небесный гость в четыре лепестка.
О мир, пойми! Певцом — во сне — открыты
Закон звезды и формула цветка.

Translation by Rupert Moreton

England

What I loved I never really knew.
A distant early childhood spent
in Greenwich-summered dim content.
Draughty Blackheath house. A mother who
would Listen with me as she should.
Father on whose shoulders through the park
giddy sun-drunk I careered. The dark
of Blackwall tunnel, home-bound, would
after Herne Bay trips declare that soon
delicious ice-cold sheets would wrap
my sunburnt back in pirate’s trap.
London wasn’t real. Its silver moon
was always spangled, picture-book.
Kites were always wind-blown on the heath.
Buses trundled red and clean beneath
the dream-blue English sky. It took
Dublin’s grit-exotic vowels to break
A childhood’s idyll. “English pig!” –
new playmates thought I was a prig.
Innocent delusion could but quake,
for potholed road to Belfast’s scar
even then was short. My SE3
playmates warned me that I soon would be
a tea-time Craven Newsround star –
post-Blue Peter victim of a war
Dulwich Prep boys, rapt, could not ignore.
I viewed my birthplace from afar,
led by parents who with every year
knew less and less about it all.
And Mrs Thatcher cast her pall
over everything I knew. I fear
by her I wasn’t unbeguiled –
youth’s precociousness was my excuse.
My association then was loose –
romantic vision undefiled
by experience’s frigid claim –
unless those Norfolk summers count,
when Grandpa’s sun-gilt wisdom’s fount
told of land the other couldn’t tame,
and beech-lined lane to yew-dank church
’midst rustled wheat and hedge-loomed cool
fathomed my evasion’s shallow pool,
encouraged adolescent search
leading to an earnest cleric’s role.
I wasn’t doctrinaire about
religion or my homeland’s clout –
preaching liberal values on the whole.
And as I aged of course I knew
all my fond delusion was but that.
Yet denial’s grasp prevented flat
acceptance of a truth still too
blunt and harmless to demand that I
embrace reality’s dull form.
But now deceit and bitter storm
bares delusion’s naked happy lie.

Rupert Moreton

The Moon (Луна), Fyodor Glinka

Fyodor Glinka (1786-1880) was banished to Petrozavodsk after the Decembrist revolt, but was eventually allowed to return to St Petersburg. This poem, written in 1826, reflects his peripheral involvement with the Decembrists.

The lovely crescent moon was beaming
Upon the silent azure field,
And ’neath the crosses domes were gleaming
Still brighter than mere gold can yield.
And prison-bound, poor captive yearning
On signs and wonders feebly raved:
He read them as if hand with burning
On earth and heavens had engraved.
And written in his secret history
He read them with emotion and
He sat, endured, clasped homeland’s mystery
And, with it, hope’s beguiling hand.

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Луна прекрасная светила
В тиши лазоревых полей
И ярче золота златила
Главы подкрестные церквей.
А бедный узник за решеткой
Мечтал о божьих чудесах:
Он их читал, как почерк четкий,
И на земле и в небесах.
И в книге тайной прошлой жизни
Он с умиленьем их читал
И с мыслью о святой отчизне
Сидел, терпел – и уповал!

Translation by Rupert Moreton

Juhannus, Eino Leino

This is a poem from Leino’s 1898 collection Sata ja yksi laulua (“One hundred and one songs”). I was to say the least unsure of the first two lines, but I think I may have conveyed their meaning.

I will lie spread-eagled, devouring light
and joy in sunshine’s tarry,
I will bathe in waters of fresh delight
And feast on every berry.

I’m possessed by juhannus and its thrall,
the feast of our midsummer,
so if I’m found weeping tonight, tears’ fall
will glint in rainbow’s shimmer.

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Minä avaan syömeni selälleen
ja annan päivän paistaa,
minä tahdon kylpeä joka veen
ja joka marjan maistaa.

Minun mielessäni on juhannus
ja juhla ja mittumaari,
ja jos minä illoin itkenkin,
niin siellä on sateenkaari.

Translation by Rupert Moreton

Juhannus

So here’s the light.
It won’t last
but
for now the palest Northern blue beguiles.
We gasp it in
and don’t quite succeed
in letting go of ice-black dark.
Some fight it, sisu-fooled.
Delusion fails.
For now
the nights
are
drawing
in.

Rupert Moreton

Evening (Вечер), Ivan Bunin

Bunin in 1901

Bunin wrote this in 1909.

Our joy is always something we remember.
It’s everywhere. Maybe it is here –
The garden by the barn in late September
Where at the window pure air casts its spear.

And in the heavens, azure and eternal,
Arises gilt-edged cloud I’ve long observed…
We see a little, know perhaps a kernel:
For only those who know is joy reserved.

The window’s open. Bird with gentle chatter
Has settled on its ledge. And from my book
I for a moment cast a weary look.

The evening falls, and from the sky birds scatter.
And now the barn emits the thresher’s call…
I see, I hear, content. I know it all.

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О счастье мы всегда лишь вспоминаем.
А счасть всюду. Может быть, оно –
Вот этот сад осенний за сараем
И чистый воздух, льющийся в окно.

В бездонном небе легким белым краем
Встает, сияет облако. Давно
Слежу за ним… Мы мало видим, знаем,
А счастье только знающим дано.

Окно открыто. Пискнула и села
На подоконник птичка. И от книг
Усталый взгляд я отвожу на миг.

День вечереет, небо опустело.
Гул молотилки слышен на гумне…
Я вижу, слышу, счастлив. Все во мне.

Translation by Rupert Moreton