And at thirty-three,
I encountered, not misfortune
but history. Strange
to be cutting, not a door or a window through,
but a skylight,
so closely barred, at that,
that the clouds, through it,
look like links in chains.

In 1969 Natalya Gorbanevskaya was sentenced to imprisonment in a Soviet psychiatric hospital for her dissident activities; in 1972 Carcanet published Daniel Weissbort’s first translations of her poems, with a transcript of her trial.

In this new, enlarged selection of translations he returns to a poet who has continued, in exile, to engage with the cause of human freedom and the poetic traditions of her homeland. Anna Akhmatova regarded Gorbanevskaya as one of the small group of poets who kept Russian poetry alive. Weissbort, one of the leading translators of Russian poetry in Britain, expands our understanding of the continuing vitality of her work. An interview with Valentina Polukhina in which Gorbanevskaya discusses her life and beliefs provides illuminating context.

Cover painting Yaroslav Gorbanevsky, Vulcan and Venus (detail). Reproduced by kind permission of the artist.

Introduction
Note on the Text

Selected Poems

from Poberezhye [Seaboard] (1956–66)

On reading Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451
The fire in the oven’s barely out
Morning. A lively wind. The woods
Concerto for orchestra
My Fortinbras, poor brother
I’ll fill the oil lamp
Why speak of disaster or beauty
I do not chase rhymes, seeking glory
Don’t touch me! I scream at passers-by
Nothing – neither fear
Unfinished poem
And mingling tears with the rain’s sweetness
On Twelfth Night, sings the cricket
Don’t destroy me, Lord
Love, what nonsense
Denying love
Joyous Mozart with an oar
In the madhouse
You are my grief. Laugh then!
In my own twentieth century
You howl, you weep ad lib
Feverish and sweating

from Angel derevianny [Wooden Angel] (1967–71)

Just music, nothing else
What is forever, what does ‘forever’ mean?
Preparing again to prolong his mortal span
As brought to bay, the deer falls
Curses! Joy! They write themselves!
Darling, darling, astonished
Hold out a handful of snow
Forgive, forgive
My love, in what region
The train’s French horn sweeps on
The savage cold of a Russian winter

from Tri tetradi stikhotvorenii [Three Notebooks of Poems] (1972–4)

My Moscow, a waxen board
Make haste, enjoy the oblique caress of the rain, the sunlight
Drought, malevolent stepmother
It was not I saved Warsaw then, or Prague after
Investigating the herring head

from Pereletaya snezhnuyu granitsu [Flying Over the Snowy Frontier] (1974–8)

Time to think
Decrepit Europe, your second childhood looming
Do not chase phantoms
My dear, what’s happening

from Chuzhie kamni [Alien Stones] (1979–82)

This truth is a lie
At that time, I fell for foreign poems
He looked around, and his soul
The untilled field is hemmed in the bonfires
A year of dire predictions
It got warmer and warmer


from Peremennaya oblachnost’ [Alternating Clouds] (1982–3)

This little clay bird

from Gde i kogda [Where and When] (1983–5)

A poor fly in amber
Epitaph (On the death of Vadim Delaunay)

from Sed’maya kniga [Seventh Book] (1985–90)

Notes for a discussion on statistics
Where the pollen crowds

from I ya zhila-byla [Once Upon a Time] (1992–4)

This phrase from the experts’ diagnosis
Waiting for the end

from Nabor [Type-setting] (1994–6)

And my friend was sold for a bushel of wheat
My head’s badly arranged
This groan of ours, this wail

from Novye vos’mistishiya [New Eight-line] (1996)

7. The Russian language

from Kto o chyom poyot [Who Sings What] (1996–7)

Exegi monumentum

from 13 vos’mistishii i eshche 67 stikhotvorenii [13 Eight-liners and 67 More Poems] (1997–9)

The Russian ‘no’

From Poslednie stikhi togo veka [Last Poems of the Last Century] (1999–2000)

My drink’s neither hot, nor weak
He Who let us sin and badmouth Him
Time to stop
Don’t fear or grieve
I don’t see, hear, sensing
We live – at times
Telegraph Lane
Blessed is the epic poet
On the long, long rue Vaugirard
There she is, myself
But I was always
Man, made in God’s image
Hey, comrade lords
Notes of a Cold War veteran
And as children
And sacred inspiration
10 = 9 (In memory of the Oberiuty)
Words float either here or there, scurrying
A citizen?
From Pindemonti
You realise, don’t you
And at thirty-three
Words are out?
I read the list of ships…
On the snow-frontier, eyelashes freeze to a column
Like a shattered embrasure
And He suffered, and for a moment
A rickety dog kennel
It happened in August
Rien de rien
Enough to pass
Who’s forgotten and what?
‘…not awful to die’
No castles, parks
Autobiographical
And adding breath to the coal
Self-parody
Like a virtual hand-drill into a virtual wall
from Another 13 eight-liners
1. A metro station
4. Socrates, you’re a valorous man, but a lousy spouse
Don’t limp
Mile by mile

from Poema bez poemy [Poem without a Poem] (2001)

Epigraph to the book Last Poems of the Last Century
Romance
Where it’s not stamped down, measured
The female sympathiser is certainly convivial
If temples, cells and imperial chambers
And correcting, improving
A poem without a poem
Dear inky one
What can I not forget
A cup, a dish, a spoon
Yesterday’s terrifying ferment
With every passing day
Nothing more, nothing less

from Chainaya roza [Tea Rose] (2002–5)

Between the roofs
Against the glass pane, a knife
And former misfortune, they say
In the August sky, a flight of stars
How, where, whence
In the pale, empty dark
My mother was born in Russia
from Military eight-liners
1. Thanks to the hand, painstakingly tracing
7. What’s happened to me
8. You’ll say: everywhere
9. And here’s a Russian problem
11. A review: how vague, the language
3. One-two-three-four-five
What’s he looking for
Yesterday, the evenings
from Square of discord
6. Enter, don’t leave

from Krugi po vode [Circles in the Water] (January 2006–August 2008)

I exit at the Gare de l’Est
What is it began to whisper
Neither stubs of tails, line-ends, full stops
Don’t restrain yourself! Out with the truth!
Lord, hear me
No road worker can set Raspail
Who is knocking at the brow, but from without
Logs in the oven don’t burn, but do warm
Wherever you went
I shall rake up on the wind, like a candle
Snack on some medication
By this overgrown route
These waves, hillocks
And Troy has not fallen
What is relevant – age, weight
For the first time I feel sorry for the unwritten poems
Malakoff
Unbearable is a poem’s eruption
I go, go, don’t whistle
I know, know
These places
Is there nothing to read?
Sometimes silence is like music
Three poems about the rain:
1. But do you like
2. Close the gate
3. Only three? Three thousand
Somewhere, someone
But music and in the deaf ear
Walk without hurrying
Like a shop assistant opening the store
Two poems about something or other
1. Of course, it’s not yet
2. The naked truth
Search and you’ll find
Even so, into a noose, into heaven
How few pinball machines now in Paris

from Razvilki [Forks in the Road] (August 2008–December 2009)

Not trying to surprise
Deaf and old
In general I don’t fear rain
I live modestly, but quite well

from Shtoito. Stikhi 2010 [Sumthing. Poems 2010] (2010)

I loved freedom
Verbs pursue me


The Language Problem of a Poet in Exile
Address by Natalya Gorbanevskaya to the full editorial board meeting of Kontinent, Munich, May 1983

Interview with Natalya Gorbanevskaya
by Valentina Polukhina

Bibliography