Julia Kunina (Trubikhina)
translated from the Russian by Betsy Hulick, Richard Sieburth, and the author
NESSUN DORMA
How headstrong the driver,
How headlong the flight
The age stands stock still, stupefied
Milestones flash by
The stationmaster paces
No one sleeps
A lull of some sort
Some suffocating closeness
Anticipates the death knell
of a world of grown men
And a great wind gathers force
At the still center of the storm
We are children, little Liu,
We are the dust of war
We are the first to be airborne, lifted
By the hot wind, for we are
Weightless
How alone we are, Liu, child!
Your house was built on sweet trifles
And not a thatched straw is left
Bit by bit all has been scattered
Dispersed, cast to the winds.
Come away with me!
So be it –
Draughty illusions of the private self
The rustle of September leaves in birch forests
We know you –
Barbarians, heads covered in lynx fur,
Swift of foot are your shaggy ponies
Each with five legs, like the Assyrian bull
Still in motion. And trampling when still.
We are not a simple tribe, our tongues
Bitten by circumlocution, crushing us,
mustard seed souls, in dust.
From too much plenty, we weep, grateful tears,
You and I, that this is our allotted time.
It shall not be torn from us, we shall pass through
Like roots pushing through earth.
And really, why complain
That a whirlwind has snatched us up
And we were scattered, strewn about, flung wide
And there was no help for it
What good does “help” do?
No one sleeps.
Nor do you, husked seeds,
Spilled from the hand
That held you, sleep.
trans. Betsy Hulick and the author
Intangible Property
for Elena Schwartz
You pull out the drawer--
there are various items:
a useless penknife
found in the Baltic sand
and later lost. A note in private code
indicating a childhood treasure trove.
You shine a flashlight in the drawer--
to reveal a cut, stung with iodine, with a grain of sand in it,
which festered into a secret abscess
which went unheeded and unhealed for ages,
while you were busy sharpening quills.
A little blue notebook, mislaid in all the many moves,
chain letters about miraculous visions of the Virgin, a miracle feather,
blue-eyed, be it a jaybird’s or a peacock’s.
Oh the joy of mourning its loss!
And the aged Hypnotic just stands there lost in thought.
Don’t worry, pal, nothing has been wasted,
the lustre of the knife’s mother-of-pearl handle in the sand,
the low light of a 40-Watt bulb,
the rainbow arcing over a new little notebook.
Childhood’s pirates laid to rest.
Life multiplied
like a chain letter,
writing itself ever onward,
effortlessly…
Locked in the light of his cell,
Fra Angelico tucked this little blue quill into the rainbow wings
of his Gabriel.
The grain of sand no longer festering.
Only the cut still stinging.
trans. Richard Seiburth
The Butterfly
The butterfly perched on marble shoulders
is frozen in flightlessness.
Nabokov might have classified it -
He was closely acquainted
With the flow of things
And the anonymous secret
burning at the tongue's root.
From marbled wingtips to antennae,
it is bodiless and flat,
as the stifling air weighs down,
and clouds hang motionless.
But here, as luck would have it,
is disclosed a secret act of art
which carries no weight: The crackle
of a splitting chrysalis
reverberates in hot air,
and, like a doomed butterfly,
your own truth is vaporized
and the great world vibrates
to a negligible effluence,
as an unfettered lift-off
underscores life itself--
the unexpected release
of sheer happiness--
of a truth without
proof.
__________
Julia Kunina (Trubikhina) was born and raised in Moscow, Russia. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature at NYU. She lives in New York and teaches at Hunter College, CUNY. As a poet, Julia published four books of original and translated verse in Russia and the U.S. Her latest book Ночные шуточки пространства (Little Practical Jokes of Space at Night) came out in St. Petersburg’s Pushkinskii. Kunina has contributed poetry to nine anthologies, published in Russia, Great Britain, and the U.S., including, An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets. Eds. Valentina Polukhina & Daniel Weissbort. University of Iowa Press, 2005, Russian Women Poets. Modern Poetry in Translation. New Series, London: University of London (King’s College), 2002, and Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry, Ed. John High, Talisman House Publishers, 2000). Julia also published poetry in Russian, European, and American literary journals, including Novyi mir and Boundary 2. She runs popular poetry readings series at Hunter College.
translated from the Russian by Betsy Hulick, Richard Sieburth, and the author
NESSUN DORMA
How headstrong the driver,
How headlong the flight
The age stands stock still, stupefied
Milestones flash by
The stationmaster paces
No one sleeps
A lull of some sort
Some suffocating closeness
Anticipates the death knell
of a world of grown men
And a great wind gathers force
At the still center of the storm
We are children, little Liu,
We are the dust of war
We are the first to be airborne, lifted
By the hot wind, for we are
Weightless
How alone we are, Liu, child!
Your house was built on sweet trifles
And not a thatched straw is left
Bit by bit all has been scattered
Dispersed, cast to the winds.
Come away with me!
So be it –
Draughty illusions of the private self
The rustle of September leaves in birch forests
We know you –
Barbarians, heads covered in lynx fur,
Swift of foot are your shaggy ponies
Each with five legs, like the Assyrian bull
Still in motion. And trampling when still.
We are not a simple tribe, our tongues
Bitten by circumlocution, crushing us,
mustard seed souls, in dust.
From too much plenty, we weep, grateful tears,
You and I, that this is our allotted time.
It shall not be torn from us, we shall pass through
Like roots pushing through earth.
And really, why complain
That a whirlwind has snatched us up
And we were scattered, strewn about, flung wide
And there was no help for it
What good does “help” do?
No one sleeps.
Nor do you, husked seeds,
Spilled from the hand
That held you, sleep.
trans. Betsy Hulick and the author
Intangible Property
for Elena Schwartz
You pull out the drawer--
there are various items:
a useless penknife
found in the Baltic sand
and later lost. A note in private code
indicating a childhood treasure trove.
You shine a flashlight in the drawer--
to reveal a cut, stung with iodine, with a grain of sand in it,
which festered into a secret abscess
which went unheeded and unhealed for ages,
while you were busy sharpening quills.
A little blue notebook, mislaid in all the many moves,
chain letters about miraculous visions of the Virgin, a miracle feather,
blue-eyed, be it a jaybird’s or a peacock’s.
Oh the joy of mourning its loss!
And the aged Hypnotic just stands there lost in thought.
Don’t worry, pal, nothing has been wasted,
the lustre of the knife’s mother-of-pearl handle in the sand,
the low light of a 40-Watt bulb,
the rainbow arcing over a new little notebook.
Childhood’s pirates laid to rest.
Life multiplied
like a chain letter,
writing itself ever onward,
effortlessly…
Locked in the light of his cell,
Fra Angelico tucked this little blue quill into the rainbow wings
of his Gabriel.
The grain of sand no longer festering.
Only the cut still stinging.
trans. Richard Seiburth
The Butterfly
The butterfly perched on marble shoulders
is frozen in flightlessness.
Nabokov might have classified it -
He was closely acquainted
With the flow of things
And the anonymous secret
burning at the tongue's root.
From marbled wingtips to antennae,
it is bodiless and flat,
as the stifling air weighs down,
and clouds hang motionless.
But here, as luck would have it,
is disclosed a secret act of art
which carries no weight: The crackle
of a splitting chrysalis
reverberates in hot air,
and, like a doomed butterfly,
your own truth is vaporized
and the great world vibrates
to a negligible effluence,
as an unfettered lift-off
underscores life itself--
the unexpected release
of sheer happiness--
of a truth without
proof.
__________
Julia Kunina (Trubikhina) was born and raised in Moscow, Russia. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature at NYU. She lives in New York and teaches at Hunter College, CUNY. As a poet, Julia published four books of original and translated verse in Russia and the U.S. Her latest book Ночные шуточки пространства (Little Practical Jokes of Space at Night) came out in St. Petersburg’s Pushkinskii. Kunina has contributed poetry to nine anthologies, published in Russia, Great Britain, and the U.S., including, An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets. Eds. Valentina Polukhina & Daniel Weissbort. University of Iowa Press, 2005, Russian Women Poets. Modern Poetry in Translation. New Series, London: University of London (King’s College), 2002, and Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry, Ed. John High, Talisman House Publishers, 2000). Julia also published poetry in Russian, European, and American literary journals, including Novyi mir and Boundary 2. She runs popular poetry readings series at Hunter College.