The Voice Over

II

Displaced Person

Poems from books

The Lyric, the Voice (2010)

Kireevsky (2012)

Essays

In Unheard-of Simplicity (2010)

Displaced Person (2012)

from The Lyric, the Voice

And a vo-vo-voice arose

To make verbs roll.

Amid commercial roses

Fine weather to ring a bell.

The drought is over,

Now it’s Easter day,

Tenderness and tenterhooks

Run along the vertebrae.

Little sleep,

But spring has sprung,

All of the bird-cherry’s teeth are white fangs,

And the sky-womb’s opened out,

Murky-tender like smoked trout.

At thirty years old

I was not very old.

At thirty-three

’Twere a babe inside me.

At thirty-five

Time came back alive.

Now I am thirty-six

Time to eat myself up quick.

Scoop out my head

With a big pewter spoon,

So new beer can be poured in

And topped off after settling,

So that she not, like the olive tree,

Spend the winter blue and empty,

So that in my pupil, like sunshine in a boot,

At least kitschy icons will stand resolute,

Many-colored,

Not like the others.

Translated by Amelia Glaser and Ainsley Morse

In the festive sky, impassivable, tinfurled,

In the burning, immemoriable, tinfouled,

See the ladder neatly leaned against the clouds,

Trodden over top to bottom by the words.

One of them is mincing steps,

And another wails and weeps,

And mine just hangs and swings there on the bar and barely grips.

Barely mumbles,

Nearly tumbles.

Friends will crowd around excited, asking questions,

At the same time breathless, speechless and tempestuous,

Quacky and screechy:

What’s up? Whaddija see?

Back at them, as from a tongueless bell, comes almost losing

Any semblance: from the fifth bar up—oh boy, what mmoooosic!

Translated by Dmitry Manin

Saturday and Sunday burn like stars.

Elder trees foam and fizz.

By the railroad crossing’s striped bars

A communal wall hovers.

Past it are slabs, like canvases, dank in the dark,

And the moon cherry,

And tiny tightly-packed crosses, a darned

Sock or a cross-stitch embroidery.

Yellow dogs pass here at an easy trot,

And grandmas come to comb the sand,

Giant women grind their temples into the rock

Wailing and thrashing to no end.

But these are times, indistinguishable like stumps,

Like my pair of knees:

At the sun one stares, in the shade the other one slumps,

Both are dust and ashes.

But these are nights when the nettle-folk stands guard

Among the pickets here,

And the gentle May enters its peaceful orchard

Raining a tear.

And between hand and hand, between day and night

There is inhumane, brightly burning, eternal

Quiet.

Translated by Dmitry Manin

In every little park, in every little square,

Lovely people go about their lovely tasks,

Girls stroll with strollers to give babies some air,

Buying little presents and kaolin facial masks.

Kaolin is only clay,

Somewhere for your corpse to lay,

Mortal cells, your bread and doom,

A collective cozy tomb.

By the pond, with their laptops, the skypers

Are cutting a pretty figure.

On the high Moscow rooftops, the snipers

Let their fingers dance on the trigger.

The augoors of inaugooration

Walkie-talk their way to elation;

On the streets, the city’s protesters

Are brought down by their own posters.

Waaa! Goo! Shush, baby, please.

Moscow’s still there, no need to howl.

Igor’s Yaroslavna is crying like an owl.^*

I’ll go get some cottage cheese.

The selection of cheeses today is wide,

As if the city had eaten its fill and died.

Translated by Alexandra Berlina

—

^* An allusion to an episode from a twelfth-century Russian epic, The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, in which Yaroslavna laments the defeat of her husband Prince Igor’s retinue.

from Kireevsky

from the cycle

YOUNG MAIDS SING

TRANSLATED BY EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY

Translator’s Note

Language is history. Maria Stepanova is a poet for whom that is the case. Her cycle Dèvushki poiùt, or Young Women Are Singing, which revisits the traumas of the Stalinist period and especially of World War II, is also historicist in its vocabulary, phraseology, and even versification. The poems of the cycle are ballads, palpably descended from the Russian adaptations of German Romantic horror ballads, but with a great dose of late Mandelstam infecting the diction, and with the emotional gestures that evoke stylizations of labor camp songs by 1960s folk singers. Stepanova amps up the disjunctions characteristic of the ballad form until they turn into the disjunctions of modern experimental poetry. We are the child taken for a ride in the forest, and we also know who the Erlkönig is.

The language of history is not a universal language at all. How do you translate it? How do you translate what the reader of the original—different child taken for the same ride—is supposed to pick up from inflections, innuendos, and incomplete gestures? How do you translate the meaning that inheres in the half-said, when the intended reading depends on shared historical experience that the reader of the translation will most certainly lack? I was grasping for straws, and my main straw in the particular instance of drowning that translating Stepanova’s poems was for me, became the classical Chinese literary ballad such as Du Fu’s “Song of the War Carts,” and in general I was remembering English-language translations of T’ang dynasty poetry: poetry whose formal concentration, citationality both erudite and pop, and constant sense of unsaid political and war trauma make it so kin to Russian poetry of the twentieth century.

This is why I called my selections from the cycle Young Maids Sing (I also toyed with Young Maid Sing). This is also why of the several experimental versions I did of “Mat’-otèts ne uznàli” (“Mom-pop didn’t know him”), I kept the one whose five-syllable lines allude to a T’ang meter, even though the Russian original alternates double and triple anapests. This is why my other, metrically sloppier translations still gesture—both rhythmically and in their discontinuities—at the kind of alienation that the pentasyllabic line can produce in English, for which the decasyllable is a far more natural meter. If I could not make an adequate translation of the original, I could at least make an adequate translation of the violence and alienation of its language of trauma. This is also why I happily translated Stepanova’s rewriting of pop songs, especially the poem whose understanding depends on knowing the lyrics of “Katyusha,” which gave its name to the Soviet transportable rocket launchers of World War II.

Unfortunately, the tortured Latinate syntax of Russian poetry, and of Stepanova’s poetry in particular, is really nothing like the straightforward syntax of classical Chinese verse. Although what I really wanted was to get rid of all the subordination of clauses, I failed at the task, but I do hope to liberate all clauses next time.

Mom-pop didn’t know him

Young wife didn’t know him

Colonel came back from

Below black blue ice

Victory vodka

The upright counts time

He went in winter

Left circles behind

Lights on in housing

A blank tenant book

In the deaf open

The dead falling in

All fire and smoke where

I passed and came out

Lentils on boil there

Blind root in the pot

No ship comes to dock

Whistle runs aground

Still the signaler

The kernel won’t sprout

Hole in my belly

Ice water within

Many tank turrets

Tear nets in the spring

I pumped up the spare

Burned papers, crushed coals

My housing permit

Here, let me go home

Safe conducts speechless

Lie sunk deep in ice

I will not know how

His wife doesn’t know him

Mama, what janitor

Lives in the basement

Can’t recollect

His scattering name

Now seldom that damned man

Comes out on burning ice

Shuffles the iron spade

Scrapes with the bright broom

When at dawn I get dressed

Come out for work

When at dusk get undressed

Stick pumps in the dresser

In that basement womb

Daylight or nightlight

He lies around like a bedspread

The abyss sets its sights on me

Child, how could we know

Our lost Alexei

Lies in the basement with no heating

Half-forgotten by people

And that you didn’t know him

For your groom and husband

It’s that life is a great hall

Where many souls take a stroll

And that they’re yellower than an orange

His non-Russian features

It too stands to reason

We too are not what once we were

We have grown old like tramcars

Ashen is your permanent

While he like a lava lamp

Glows alone in the basement

A train is riding over Russia

Along some great river

The passengers took off their shoes

The conductors don’t look sober

Slippery with grease and dreamy

Chicken thighs go sailing by

The faces of huddled humanity

Like trees in unsteady water

I walk in a state-owned throw

Through train cars full of people

And sing as earnestly

As a saved soul in paradise

It’s a dirty job, even dirtier

Than the bossman-conductor might deem

For a quality song in our business

Always rises up to a scream

Ladies gasp when with my naked larynx

Over the knee-jerk cursing of men

I sing of how poppies turn even more red

When the blood of our commander drips down on their head

My voice makes a hole in the comfort

Of the car like an out-of-nowhere shiv

Everyone starts feeling downcast

And takes turns beating me by the toilet

An honest song has such outrage in it

The heart cannot stomach the shame

The passengers keep their defenses up

Like a tear in the middle of a face

Ordnance was weeping in the open

For the hero’s open wound

There he lay, his breast thrown open halfway

In anticipation of the end

Battle-prattle rattled in the eardrums

Tattled, sent regrets for plodding hammers

Female installation the Katyusha

Fed with kasha the whole panorama

And, while she was pounding close-in targets

As she polished off the riverbanks

For the one she was in love with

For the one she could not save

Raining dust and down off his service coat

Tensing infantile wings to fly

The heir of the gray eagle of the steppes

Kept watch over his parent from the sky

The A went past, Tram-Traum

It’s given lifts to you and me

Some mademoiselle will now

Open a fashion boutique

Lay out the blacks and whites

Wipe the empty mirrors

Look up at the unplugged

Displays from the corner

Which don’t reflect the Friday hour

Not the shopping people

Not a few summer dresses

But something else entirely

In everyday hustle and bustle

The gait of grandpa’s spring

You by the bakery

With a net bag of national air

The past is waterborne

A tear washes away

Its look of reproach

And falls to disappear in the display

We open up like faucets

This way and that, this way and that

Boutique security

Never give us a second look

Well I don’t sing Kupitye papirosn

And I don’t hazard games of chance

I resolve issues of high priority

On the guesstimate that I won’t die today

The postal carriage is coming down the rails

The iron horse is steaming at the bit

You let it go after an hour or so

That you are not entirely ready for it

Into whichever of our young republics

I’ll carry off my empty head

That heart’s a bagel, it costs only a ruble

Get it before it’s cold

from the cycle

KIREEVSKY

TRANSLATED BY SASHA DUGDALE

The light swells and pulses at the garden gate

Rolls itself up, rolls itself out

Smetana,^* the very best—open up, mamma

Sweet lady, unlatching a casement—the best and the finest!

O black-throated Smetana, flame up

O white-winged Smetana, flare high

I’m no Lenten gruel, no scourge of sultanas

No faceless soup of curds for convicts

Don’t you dare compare my cream of ermine!

Are you pleased with a simple-minded cheese?

As the land rises and falls in hills and valleys

I’m shaped in living lipids and calories

Congealed unconcealed made gloriously manifest

Turned from one side to another and back again

Who will take up a silver spoon to muddy

My lilac-hued body?

And you, my light, barely at the threshold

Little fool, my light, never where I need you

You effulgent, I gently melting

I gently melting, I slightly smelling

And down there, where life rustles in the undergrowth

A tiny frog sits and croaks

Swells and croaks. Croaks and swells

And lifts its front legs to protect itself.

—

^* Translator’s note: Smetana is Russian sour cream.

In the village, in the field, in the forest

A coach rattled past, a carriage

A smart little trap with a hood like a wing

From the big city they came, from Kazan,

At the turning of the year, with caskets and coffers

To carry out an inspection, a census:

Oh the forest is full of souls, and the water’s flow,

Many souls in the hamlet, and in the oak tree, too

And day wanders the wood, walking into the wind

All its own self long, on the spoor of the hind.

And the circles of dancers—still traces in the ground

The lips of hired weepers—not yet shrivelled

And all of it, even the young Cleïs,

Recorded in the book of conscience

And behind the gilded crest stamped on the boards

They barely dare to scratch or burp.

A deer, a deer stood in that place

Under the nut tree

And tears ran down its coat

Blood smoked on the snow.

A deer, a deer stood in that place

Under the nut tree

And rocked, rocked gently

The empty cradle.

A deer, a deer stood in that place

Asking the endless question

And from beyond the seven seas

Carried the wails of a child.

I wandered the yards, I glanced in the windows

I searched for a child I could raise myself

Choose myself a little babby

Maybe a girl or a little laddy

I’d feed my child the purest sugar

Teach it to lace and embroider

Take it for strolls under my pinny

Sing sweet songs to my own little sonny.

But they cast me out, they came at me

With torches and pitchforks they drove me

Your own foolish mothers and fathers!

And you will wander snot-nosed for years

Angering strangers, lost and derided

Without the muzzle-scent of tears

Never knowing your own true tribe.

The last songs are assembling,

Soldiers of a ghostly front:

Escaping from surrounded places

A refrain or two make a break for it

Appearing at the rendez-vous

Looking about them, like the hunted.

How stiffly unbending they are

Running water won’t soften them now!

How unused they are to company

The words don’t form as they ought.

But their elderly, skillful hands

Pass the cartridges round,

And until first light their seeing fingers

Reassemble Kalashnikovs,

They draw, with sharp intake of breath

From wounds, the deeply lodged letters—

And toward morning, avoiding checkpoints,

They enter the sleepless city.

In times of war, they fall silent.

When the muses roar, they fall silent.

from the cycle

UNDERGROUND PATHEPHONE

My dear, my little Liberty,

I wanted you—but why?

A tiny boat runs on the sea,

Alone in it I lie.

A teaspoon sits beside a plate,

But nothing’s left to stir.

I’ve done some being around the place,

I will not anymore.

My soul, unmarred, unmarried,

You are all mist and dew,

Homely and unhurried,

Beautiless and subdued—

Where the azure used to sparkle in

Vermillionish banks,

There muscular and masculine

Clouds close their solid ranks.

Translated by Dmitry Manin

There he lies in his new bed, a band of paper round his head,^*

Such a mustachioed gentilhomme, now in the coffin all alone,

So here he lies, all numb and quiet, and the collar of his face

Is growing yellow from inside, but you would best avert your gaze,

For deep within, just like a clock that’s scratching its tick-tock-tick-tock,

He still produces, dull and low, his never-ceased Iloveyouso,

But all the people at his side, they wouldn’t hear him if they tried,

Just us, we look from the plafond, invisible, but not for long,

Each one of us, so well we know:

I too had squadrons to command,

Wore in my mouth Iloveyouso,

Wore round my head a paper band.

Translated by Alexandra Berlina

—

^* In Russian Orthodox funeral rites, paper or cloth bands inscribed with a prayer and sacred images are placed on the forehead of the deceased.

Don’t wait for us, my darling

Me and my friend been took.

Reporting back from the front, sir:

There’s war wherever you look.

We’re based down in a basement

In the deepest depths of the clay

They’re throwing flames above us

But we’ve gone away

Some arrived only lately

Some at the beginning of time

All of them flat as playing cards

Fallen in the grime.

And the earth that flows between us

Is thick as wine.

We were men but now

We’re amino acids in soup

The smell of tears and sperm

And bonemeal and gloop

And me I’m singed at the edges

A piece of felted wool

The one who stood at the window with you

Is made of deep hole.

When they lay that table

With plates on damask cloth

When they light the Christmas tree

And sing Ave to the host

When a camel hoof

Breaks the icy crust—

A king’s ransom: gold

Frankincense and myrrh

Won’t light us through the cold

Won’t ward off the hunger

So it was all a lie, my girl.

No need to caress the brambles

Or finger through the copse

I’m the empty corner of old cloth

The earth has lain on top.

Translated by Sasha Dugdale

Don’t strain your sight,

What’s mortal is not inside.

However you knock,

They won’t come to unlock.

However I love

The depth of your tender gaze,

Still sparrows will arrive,

And peck at our remains.

I am earth, march-’n’-marsh, muck-’n’-mold,

Collarbone, flowers in season.

Naught will happen to me, I know,

For a whole ’nother reason.

Translated by Irina Shevelenko

FOUR OPERAS

TRANSLATED BY SIBELAN FORRESTER

1. Carmen

They still allow us to smoke in the office,

They get it: this kind of work, you have to smoke,

They run after one as he’s walking: hey, commander,

The second from the table raises his eyes to the door,

The second one from the trial raises his eyes to a hook,

There the lamp’s swaying back and forth, Svetlana, what’ll I say

When the earth quakes, and the ground opens its mouth,

And the arrested earn their execution?

The third one stands up, decorated, and he has everything,

But they’ve called him, and he goes.

“Look for me at dawn,” he said to his comrades,

As if he and they are he and someone else

Who’s alone, like Job, and waits for him like for a storm.

What’s that blue sign on his arm, sister?

That’s a powerful sign on his arm, girlfriend.

There it sort of says: beloved,

My darling, take care of yourself, don’t be on the take in front of everyone,

Give your parents a call, take time off on Wednesday,

If you don’t take it—try to behave yourself,

And if there’s anything call, if there’s anything call for me.

2. Aida

Beautiful, quiet, or rather: she hardly knows Russian,

I like her surroundings, the gingerbread, sugar and all the halvah,

All and all manner of halvah that’s exuding praise,

When she’s in the corner and weighing out the goods.

Her fingers take tangerines by the sides, the freight

Of greenish, stepped-on, sweetly moaning pears—by the neck,

She loads the dark flesh of eggplant into the white

Flesh of rustling plastic; and the price list is born.

While the persimmon is like a mother to her, and she doesn’t look at it

And feels shame for her public profession.

I ask her a question, and she doesn’t give an answer.

I drop by like a thief, and she won’t restrain the thief.

Her weak, her cheap labor force

Is all gathered in her arms and won’t tolerate conversation.

Her father and everyone’s will descend upon us like an avalanche,

The moment she doesn’t turn out to be a virgin.

Her father and everyone’s, the elder guide,

Head doctor of an empty mountain hospital,

Where someone’s ribs, like the mother’s womb, are stretched

And fear pulls apart eyelashes that were squeezed flat.

Her father and everyone’s, he’s coming after his dotter,

Along the dark route he stretches by day and by night,

Like a stripe of fug on a train car’s walls.

When his armies make their way into the city,

And stick like a bone in the throat by Red Square,

And go along ambulance roads, easing their hunger,

Taking the fox-fur coats off the homespun poor,

We’ll wait for them beneath the mound,

Where Yulia the manager swore at her today.

3. Fidelio

The session begins, everything rustles,

They lead witnesses out and lead new ones in,

The sentence is delivered in haste,

The accused turns into the convicted.

The sentence is brought into action,

Usually with the doctor and the prison director.

They don’t allow relatives in here.

They don’t allow journalists in here either.

They let the convicted in here, one by one,

Arrange their shoulders, ankles and wrists,

Let them smoke one final cigarette,

Give them a shot, give them alternating current,

The convicted man turns into a bear.

The relatives don’t usually come to pick them up,

Although I do know of one exceptional case:

They keep it at the dacha, under guard, to live out its years.

The unclaimed ones are distributed to zoos,

To circus troupes, to private animal collections:

They aren’t aggressive, they can be trained well,

They walk on their hind legs, sometimes they say “Mama.”

(The woman disguised in the pelt of a guard

is politely ushered into a “Black Mariah.”)

4. Iphigenia in Aulis

The action continues by the water,

A fatal war, trenches, swords, cuirasses,

The yids occupy the war’s left bank,

The faggots stand in formation on the right.

This battle takes place on foot, it will never end,

Will grind through and chew up five hundred generations,

Will have its way, like a nuclear winter,

Because cavalry attacks them from the heavens,

While darkness comes on from under the ground,

Piercing the heel and poking the knees apart.

Each one of us stands on that bank or this.

Each one of us didn’t lay down arms at once.

Each one of us, long as we’re still alive,

Looks toward where the flag-bearers are consulting,

The riders whistle and shout back and forth,

Where willy-nilly you turn into a poet.

Let me join the yids or the faggots,

I’ve been dreaming of this since third grade:

To become a stag or a ram for you,

A fatted heifer or a pudgy aunt,

A maiden, revealed in the bushes!

With a sword in my chest I sing and do not die

In the war waged on the foothills of paradise.