Rainy Weather

A vague anticipation,
A vague regret.
Outside, an empty tree-lined lane
Rustles in the semi-dark.
Every evening by the gate
The willows weep and wane.
Is it autumn yet?
Or just the sadness of the trees?
No, autumn is still distant,
This shower will soon abate.
Everywhere you look
It's summer.
Nature all around displays
Its multi-colored gloss.
But the rain brings
Moisture and cooler days.
Hail grey clouds
And my own unhappy weather!
Rather look forward to joy
Than lament its loss.

1957

Who Answered Me in the Forest Grove

Who answered me in the forest grove?
Did an old oak whisper to a pine,
Or a mountain ash creak far away,
Or the okarina of a goldfinch sing,
Or a robin, my little pet,
Call suddenly at sunset?

Who answered me in the forest grove?
Did you remember
One spring, our past,
Our cares and troubles,
Our wanderings apart,
You, who singed my heart?

Who answered me in the forest grove?
Morning and evening, in cold and heat,
I still hear the faint echo,
The sigh of an unbounded love,
And my trembling poems
Straining towards you from my palms.

1957

The Autumn Maple

[after S. Galkin]

The autumn world is sensibly ordered
And inhabited.
Enter, be quiet in the heart of things,
Like this maple.

And if dust covers you momentarily,
Don't be alarmed.
Let the dew from dawn fields
Wash your leaves.

When thunder breaks out over the world
And a windstorm rages,
Your slender trunk is forced to bend
Towards the ground.

And even falling into a fatal weariness
From such torments,
Be silent, my friend, like this
Autumn tree.

Don't forget, it will straighten again,
It isn't bowed,
For the autumn maple is made wiser
By the earth's wisdom.

1955

*Samuil Zalmanovich Galkin (1897-1960)
was a Soviet Jewish poet and dramatist from
whose unnamed poem this is an adaptation.

Signs of Winter

As the first signs of winter
Hover above the Neva's expanse,
We compare the scattered leaves
Along its banks to summer's radiance.

But I admire these old poplars
Whose branches refuse to shed
Their dry and rusty armor
Till winter's first storms ahead.

How to describe our similarity?
Like the poplar I'm growing old,
And I too should meet, in my armor,
Winter's coming, its mortal cold.

1955

The Beauty Of Human Faces

There are faces like magnificent portals,
Everywhere the exalted is found in the small.
There are faces like wretched hovels,
Where liver is cooked and rennet boiled.
Some are cold, lifeless faces
Locked up with a dungeon's bars.
Others are towers, where no one has toiled
Or peered out from turreted places.
But once I knew a little hut,
Simple and modest in every regard,
And through its windows spring's scents
Wafted to me from the yard.
Indeed the world is great and glorious!
There are faces like songs of rejoicing,
From whose radiant sun-like notes,
A song of the heavens gloats.

1955

Autumn Landscapes

1. In the Rain

My umbrella tears and like a bird
Breaks loose, cracking.
A damp hut of rain stirs and steams
Above the world.
And I stand amid the intertwining
Of cool stretched bodies,
As if the rain wished to merge
With me for a while.

2. Autumn Morning

Lovers cease their conversation,
The last starling flies away,
All day maples shed
Silhouettes of crimson hearts.
Autumn, what have you done to us!
The earth cools in red and gold.
Grief's flame hisses underfoot,
Rustling like a pile of leaves.

3. The Last Cannas

Everything that shone and sang
Disappeared into autumn forests,
And slowly the sky breathes
Its last warmth on the body.
Mists creep through trees,
Fountains fall silent in a garden,
Only the motionless cannas
Blaze in sight of all.
So, an eagle, spreading its wings,
Stands on the ledge of a cliff,
And a fire stirs in its beak,
Advancing from the mist.

1955

Return from Work

Storms circle round the village,
And through anguished rain,
Flashes of lightning shatter
The sky once again.

It pours as from a flask,
And above assembled birches
A feast of electricity and rain
In fury and chaos merges.

But we walk along the road
Among the bushes and the grass,
With tridents, like Greek gods,
Held skyward in our grasp.

1954

Nocturnal Promenade

Pavillions spread over the square,
The maple leaves kiss the stars.
It's night - a celebration there,
Merriment and festivity in the park.

But when a pyrotechnist hurls
A silvery light from tree-tops to sky,
Poet, don't put your trust
In the night's fantastic bursts.

The rocket will fly off and die,
Its fiery sparks will grow dim...
But a poet's heart shines forever
In the pure depths of a poem.

1953

The Poet

Behind an old house, a forest,
In front, a field of oats,
In the sky, a cloud, a silver sphere,
Unprecedented beauty boasts.
With edges vaguely lilac-tinted,
The center threatening and bright...
A wing of a wounded swan somewhere
Drifts slowly out of sight.
And down below, on an old balcony,
Sits a youth with greying hair,
Like a portrait in an old medallion
Rimmed by camomille flowers.
His eyes are growing narrow,
And by the Moscow sun he's warmed,
A poet, the heart's voice,
Forged by Russia's thunderstorms.
Behind the house, the forest stands nocturnal,
The oats are growing in a fury...
And what was unknown before,
To the heart is here made eternal.

1953

The Portrait

Poets, you should love painting!
For it alone
Can portray on canvas
Signs of an unsettled soul.

Remember how Struiskaya,
Draped in satin, looked at us
Out of Rokotov's portrait
From the depths of the past?

Her eyes were two clouds,
Half-smiling, half-weeping,
Like two lies,
Veiled by the mist of failure.

Two riddles came together,
Half-rapture, half-fright,
A touch of mad tenderness,

An expectation of mortal pain.

When darkness descends,
And a thunderstorm threatens,
Her lovely eyes will glimmer
From the depths of my soul.

1953

Note: Fyodor Stepanovich Rokotov's (1730-1808) portrait of the

noblewoman Struiskaya now hangs in the Tretiakov Gallery.