Anna Akhmatova

 

 

(Russia)

 

 

 

from Wild Honey Is a Smell of Freedom

 

Wild honey has a scent – of freedom

Dust – a scent of sunshine

And a girl’s mouth – of violets.

 

But gold – nothing.

Water – like mignonette.

And like apple – love.

But we have learned that

 

blood smells only of blood.

 

1934, Leningrad

tr. Ilya Kaminsky & Katie Farris

 

 

 

He liked three things on Earth:

 

white peacocks, evensong,

and old maps of America.

 

He hated children crying,

And raspberry jam with tea,

and women’s hysterics.

 

… and he had married me.

 

from Russian by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky

 

 

 

from Northern Elegies, # 4

 

As for memories, they have three parts —

the first is only yesterday

when laughter is still heard, but our cheeks

are wet— this part doesn’t last long. Already

a different sun is over us; not far

is an empty house,
 walls are frozen in March and in August humid,

where spiders are dust and chairs are dust and doors,

photographs are transformed

into photographs, and people come to this house as to a cemetery,

and, back at home, they wash their hands, breathing,

not breathing. But the clock ticks, April

becomes April, the sky is sky,

cities change to cities, witnesses die,

there is no neighbor to cry with, no face to spit at.

And the our dead slowly walk from us,

to our dead. Their

return to us would be terrifying.

We find we have forgotten

even the highway number that led to the lonely house,

and, choked with shame or anger, jump in the car and drive to it,

but all (as in our sleep) is different:

neighbors, chairs, walls, and no one sees us —

we’re foreigners. We got off on the wrong highway exit

and now we stand here

and we realize that we could not contain

this past in our lungs, our hands,

it has become almost as foreign to us

as a deaf neighbor in the next apartment is foreign.

And yes, we would not recognize

our own dead husbands, mothers, wives, children; and those

whom God separated from us, got on

splendidly without us — 
all is for the better…

 

— a version by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Akhmatova

 

 

 

____________________________________________

 

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government.

Ilya is the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) which won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine.Dancing In Odessa was also named Best Poetry Book of the Year 2004 by ForeWord Magazine. In 2008, Kaminsky was awarded Lannan Foundation’s Literary Fellowship

Poems from his new manuscript,Deaf Republic, were awardedPoetry magazine’s Levinson Prize and the Pushcart Prize.

His anthology of 20th century poetry in translation, Ecco Anthology of International Poetry,  was published by Harper Collins in March, 2010.

His poems have been translated into numerous languages and his books have been published in Holland, Russia, France, Spain. Another translation is forthcoming in China, where his poetry was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize.

Kaminsky has worked as a law clerk for San Francisco Legal Aid and the National Immigration Law Center.

Currently, he teaches English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University.

 

 

http://www.ilyakaminsky.com/