shenbuv | Some of my poems in English

Hava Brоcha Korzakova
Authorized translation from Hebrew

To the Memory of Ahmad-Shah Massoud

1

A mouse got caught. He may have been correct,
The allah-akbared jerk who duped him breathless,
The god of bandits also known as Hermes
This time just great and splendidly has crept.

A fox got caught, no dodge was of assistance,
Slacking for a moment, then just rising higher,
And so the country that expects the fire,
And so the army fighting for persistence.

Revenge by strangers doesn't mend assassination,
The fire blow gives no consolation -
The road of villains it will not share.

Cold even in the middle of the riot,
The Lion whose roar now has got quiet,
Will lie forever in the valley of Pandjsher.

2
The only God, the merciful God indeed,
We pray, accept the soul of mujahid.

For twenty years of battles he survived,
And smiling at the camera, he died.

To nobody his wound truly sears,
Except of his admirers and trustees,

But the explosion, so far and so on,
Had echoed in the Twins and Pentagon.

And allies (united following his death)
Take his revenge and will clean up a mess.

A fragrance of the fields of burning poppy-rose
The angels will wave up to his nose.

And maybe, what would please him to the full,
His successor will get back to Kaboul.
23.09.2001

The Fortieth day

The lack of existence doesn't follow the existence,
But comes before it, as my fellow used to say.*
Even the death does not threaten the mental sequence,
It isn't the end, but for us it is a delay.

At least the mourners can get up and clean up the nose
After revenge or forgiveness, which could be violent,
Since now you'll speak only to them, because
Some other people so liked you just to be silent.
21.10.2001

* Joseph Brodsky in one of his last interviews.

To Doris Sims
(translated by Yana Kane-Esrig)

There is one thing I'd like to tell the poets:
Learn to be silent till the poems will come.
M. Petrovyh

Between two languages my words have lost their way
My mouth is numb to either tongue today.
Hour after hour drop down and are absorbed
By CNN, report after report.

I wanted poetry to glue and hold together
This shredded day. But it unravels further.
I'm sinking. Yet a hundred years from now
What will it matter? Who will even know?

Silence is wisdom's path to glory (so they say)
The bitch of poetry is not in heat today
For all the males are dead or far away.

So let the Internet and wine help keep me warm.
My hopes lie in my tongues. Though now struck dumb,
I know it's "silence, till the poems will come".

* * *

Talk to me, Hebrew, - otherwise why are you there?
I'll know the pray - so what if there is no lamb?
You even wouldn't feel I am aware,
Don't you get numb, sing to my ears, damn!

Talk to me quickly, and no matter how,
My missle is shrieking, and my term is passed,
Because the bus that I am taking now
This very moment may turn to dust.

The snoring beast, on the language's nails
It lies, the poetry, with opened jaws,
Because I have no Love, and the Rhyme plays
Over and over between those Yemen boys.

O winged child, did you leave your bow?
Please take me as your prey, I'm lying outstreched, –
That I shall win the Hebrew crown and so
To be the queen inside the curled head.

* * *
Only dreaming on freeing bird – or did I?
By my self? Or did it fly on it's own?
On the holy kitharos the wind is playing,
The whiff is ancient.

The perfumed grove makes the legs weaker,
Makes the ear stronger, the chest warmer,
Turns the heads around and dictates Aeolic
Tunes in a whisper.

Why should with the tune gets the forest darker?
Run the does away and their eyes are closed?
Through the day of cedar I almost can see
Ciclamen's evening.

How did I get up to here now?
It's the drinking muddles on the forest's roads,
It's some mortal gave me – and some immortal –
Wine of Japheth.

But in prose to me all on a sudden
Speaks the only sense which remained sober:
"Don't touch the boy with your hands, a billy-
Goat will last you."

* * *
(translation in prose)

On September, October, November eighteen sixty one
No plans fell, no wars were started,
No states have been established, no homeless
Feared from the patrol, no student from being recrued.

Let us return and listen to silence and stillness,
The calm and the peace there will be heared,
Akhmatova is still alive, and Stokholm is still deserted,
Itzhak isn't born yet, Abraham just left to Haran.

On the pictures from eighteen sixty one, I swear,
The cars don't move, the tram will never come,
Because while Joseph Brodsky is writing "The Procession",
The mankind is busy not to make any noise, not to disturb.
1.04.1994

* * *
My friends, the poets, - still my friends, I hope, -
I loved you more than your poems I've heared,
I hated competition and prefered
To run away into the Hebrew scope.

A glass, a mug, a bottle, no, a barrel
I'll raise for you, I was reflected in your lives, -
For our teacher whom I'll never stop to praise,
For our School which I'll never quarrel.

But probably too far away I've run,
They will not ask me any more to read,
I can not keep alliance any longer…

Look at my nestling, at my firstborn son, -
When he will speak, you'll hear that indeed, -
The Hebrew really is his mother's tongue.

* * *
- There I'be with Osip again.
Nadezhda Mandelshtam
- No, there I'll be with him.
Anna Akhmatova

And older pianist have come and sate,
From here he ressembles somebody else
Whose living voice still we didn't forget,
But getting blind to us his living gaze.

So you are sad enough and far enough,
And not a thing is going to be the same,
He's parted with you and with me above,
And after all he will be with me in this game.
Till then let us remain and cry, whoever cries.
But listen, there is some good in those things:
Threads of Eternity are now Joseph's strings,
His audience are Universe and skies.