Thursday, January 28, 2016

Slutsky's Gaze

Boris Slutsky (1963) / Image courtesy of Radio Svoboda

Holding a Gaze
   by Boris Slutsky

An honest man
should look others straight in the eye.
We don’t know why.
What if the honest man
has watery, bloodshot eyes?
What if the dishonest one
has terrific eyesight? 
Somehow, those who served as safe-keepers
in every time and place
learned to judge truthfulness
by firmness of gaze.
Did the spies who protected,
say, Sulla really have the right
to sort dishonest from honest?
And was Tamerlane’s secret service,
for instance, really
made up of moralists?
Everyone who sees has the right
to run their eyes madly up and down
and be judged not by their gaze,
not by scent or sound,
but by word and deed.    

Translated by Jamie Olson

Friday, January 1, 2016

Pineapples in champagne!

First edition of Severyanin's Pineapples (1915) / Image courtesy of allpix.com

Overture
Igor Severyanin

Pineapples in champagne! Pineapples in champagne!
Spectacularly sparkling—tasty and zesty!
I dive into Norway, I’m swimming in Spain!
With a mind-bolt of vision, I jump for my pencil!

The whirr of airplanes! The buzz of racecars!
Wing-beats from iceboats! Wind-claps from train cars!
Hey, someone got beat up! Whoa, someone got kissed!
Pineapples in champagne—the nighttime’s own pulse!

With nervous girls, in a crowd of tough dames,
I’ll change life’s tragedy to dreamlike farce…
Pineapples in champagne! Pineapples in champagne!
From Moscow to Nagasaki! From New York to Mars!

January 1915
Petrograd

Translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson

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