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ISSN 1556-4975
Anthology of Russian Minimalist and Miniature Poems;
Part I, The Silver Age. Translated by Alex Cigale.
Page 4
Fyodor Tyutchev Ivan Turgenev Afanasy Fet Vladimir Solovyov Innokenty Annensky Fyodor Sologub
Valery Bryusov Sasha Chorny Andrey Bely David Burlyuk Vasily Kamensky Velimir Khlebnikov
Aleksei Kruchenykh Vladislav Khodasevich Igor Severyanin Anna Akhmatova Vasilisk Gnedov
Boris Pasternak Osip Mandelstam Mikhail Zenkevich Marina Tsvetayeva Yevgeny Kropivnitsky
Vladimir Mayakovsky Anatoly Mariengof Nicolai Oleinikov Daniil Kharms Semeon Kirsanov Jan Satunovsky
Alexander Blok Nikolay Nekrasov Vyacheslav Ivanov Sergey Gorodetsky Zinaida Gippius Sophia Parnok
Nikolay Aseyev Georgy Ivanov Gavriil Derzhavin Nikolay Karamzin Alexander Pushkin Mikhail Lermontov
BORIS PASTERNAK (1890-1960)
Not like other people, not every week,
Not all the time, in a century but twice,
I prayed to you: please intelligibly
Reiterate the words of creation.Unbearable to you are the admixtures
Of intimacies and people's slavishness.
How could you possibly make me happy?
With what would you consume the earth's salt?1915
Spring
Spring, coming in from street, where poplars
stand amazed, the distance is scared, the houses
afraid to fall down, the air blue, like a sack
of clothes carried by a patient leaving a hospital.Where the evening is empty, an interrupted tale,
left abandoned by a star without continuation
to the incomprehension of a thousand noisy eyes
of the homeless and those bereft of expression.1918
Gentleness
With blinding brilliance
The evening dawns at seven.
From streets toward awnings
Darkness marches apace.
People – they are manikins;
Only lust and sadness lead
Them across the universe
Feeling their way by touch.
The heart under the palm
Betrays with its shuddering
Tension of chase and escape,
Glimmers of fright and flight.
Feelings take to liberty
And freedom with ill-ease,
Tearing just like a horse
At the bit of its mouthpiece.
Links To Russian Originals. Links to Pasternak audio/video .
OSIP MANDELSTAM (1891-1938)
The sound, cautiously subdued,
of a fruit having come unglued
from a tree among unquiet hum
of the deepest silence of wood.1908
Suddenly, from a half-dim hall,
you slid out, hidden by a shawl –
we were no trouble to a soul,
we didn't wake the drowsy help.1908
There is nothing that needs to be said,
There is nothing that has to be taught,
So full of sorrow and so it is good,
The dark and intimate animal soul.It has no need to teach anything,
It cannot speak or quibble at all
And in the form of a young dolphin
It swims on the world's gray squalls.December 1909, Heidelberg
The humid dusk covers up lies,
The tightness in a breathing chest...
It may be that I value the most
A wire-thin cross and secret ways.1910
People here fear the exertion of labor
Like a six-winged and thundering bull.
As though swollen with venomous blood
The roses that presage winter bloom...October 1930
Black night, barrack's blight,
The fattest fleas....<1938>
Links on Mandelstam, including his book of children's verse, "PRIMUS", 1925.
Links To Russian Originals of Mandelstam's Poems.
MIKHAIL ZENKEVICH (1891-1973)
All that is past appears to us a dream,
All future – a distant wish unfulfilled,
In the present moment only do we live
An immediate life that is fully real.The uninterrupted moment's lightning flash
into the here and now is what makes us as
indestructible as melded metal seams –
of our wished-for futures, our past dreams.20 December 1940
How many years now I've silently desired
to trade in my bookcase for a simple shelf
and rebind my poetry books in new covers.
Oh, Muse, forgive a poet's selfish dreams.
Money pans, flashes, and is gone in a blink.
A poet's dreams may never be fulfilled.10 January 1941
Poet, why do you swill stale wine,
then pour the dregs in new bottles?
All of it was said before, of old,
and rhyme will not refresh a line.What you pour forth is an old game,
plagiary will not spread your name:
“The Song of Songs” said all of love
and the Ecclesiast had death foretold.27 January 1941
The poet, poor wretch, puts on airs,
but nothing comes out on paper.
Let him bluster and flaunt some more –
perhaps the poem will write itself.January 1941
With all the reports from the front I had read,
I woke at night drenched in sweat and in dread:
I dreamt I had lost my ration card for bread.3 April 1942
MARINA TSVETAYEVA (1892-1941)
A kiss on the forehead – erases worry.
I kiss your forehead.A kiss on the eyes – removes insomnia.
I kiss you on the eyes.A kiss on the lips – is water to drink.
I kiss your lips.A kiss on the forehead – erases memory.
I kiss your forehead.June 5, 1917
One half of my window dissolved.
One half of my soul materialized.
Come, let us open the other half.
That other half of the window!May 1920
The whole sea – requires the sky entirely.
The whole heart – requires all of God.April 27, 1920
He’s gone – can’t eat:
No taste – in bread.
All’s chalk,
For which I will not reach.… My bread he was,
And snow also.
The snow’s not white,
And bread not right.Jan. 23, 1940
It’s time to shed my amber,
It’s time to trade in words,
It’s time to dim the light
Above my door….February 1941
YEVGENY KROPIVNITSKY (1893-1979)
To write from nature
is lovely and refreshing.
The chickens stroll –
and all is swell.The bushes as well,
for them I'm grateful.
Everything for the poet,
and with the poet, a fête.1939
December's here but there's no snow
And mud and dirt go on and on
And everybody's feet slide apart.
December's come, the snow has not.
And everyone gets irritated
And curses that there is no snow
And snow awaits and waits and waits.
When will it snow? But there is none.
The mud and dirt go on and on.1939
I like it very much when
the weather is wet and warm,
that rotten leaf smell. When
the distance is lit up by a haze
so sorrowful and silent. When
everything moves slowly. And when
the fog is everywhere and water also.1940
I walk this world's hurly-burly
Toward some mysterious end
Above me the purple-clad stars
Strewn, spun by someone overhead.Earthly comfort, dull and unpleasant.
Under my window the howls of dogs.
How could I possibly be connected
To this world's great mystery?1944
To Page 5 : Vladimir Mayakovsky Anatoly Mariengof Nikolai Oleinikov Daniil Kharms Semeon Kirsanov Jan Satunovsky
