We walked in rhythm as if life were our dance Holding hands, we smiled whilst on our way Exchanging too a soft and loving glance We walked in rhythm as if love were a dance Showing both the strength and the nuance I wish my love were still with me at play We walked in rhythm, our life a home made dance Holding hands, we smiled whilst on our way
The little words invented as we loved Now have no other speaker but myself. Lost, unique, the husband, so beloved, These little words expressed our private love. In my speech, these words no longer live I cannot use those words, our loving wealth. The chosen words invented as we loved Now have no other listener but myself.
I sense a feel of panic in the air As if the Ark is not quite waterproof I wonder if we’d welcome Tony Blair
To the poor this life was rarely fair But now it seems unreal, is it a spoof? I sense a piece of Putin in the air
I am looking in the mirror at my hair It looks like Boris Johnson’s but more louche I wonder if we’d dye old Tony Blair’s
The Russian wolf is licking his rich fur He’s happy Britain’s weakened with fake truth I feel a sense of monsters near, oh dear.
Putin won his Trump with that strange hair Now it’s cyber warfare on the hoof Will he soon take Leave from Tony Blair?
The Russians in Crimea are still there The Ukraine weeps because we did not care I sense a feel of Russia in the air
I wonder if they’ll fragment us and tear.
Fifty years since I became your bride My old age unthinkable back then No longer are you happy by my side
Now I feel like drift wood on the tide Going where I do not know or when Fifty years since I became your bride
How to be alone, and how decide? Grateful am I to the words I pen No longer are you smiling by my side
With no map or path, I roamed plains wide Wandered like a lunatic with pain Fifty years since I became your bride
At least I am alive and here reside Wandering is no life for those disdained No longer are you sitting by my side
I think of history and the years you spanned The worst World War, your mother, life began Fifty years since I became your bride No longer are you here;oh,love , you died.
Autumn time in Essex where we drove When farmers burned the stubble of the corn The earth itself was fiery like young love The smokey air rose like a cloud new born
The Kentish landlocked cliffs are wide and steep The farmers grow their grain on land beneath And there too we have seen the holy fire The flames and smoke arrest me with desire
The earth and soil, the harvest we find there Give me joy both full of wheat or bare Why did burning stubble make me glow? These images affect the heart’s deep core
Now fires are banned., they damage our pure air And I did not like the murder of the hare
Roman roads connected in straight lines The cities they had built in wealthy times The remains of one goes past my garden gate Do ghosts of Roman legions pass at night?
I like to see connections,maps and roads Others love old cities ,walls and moats My road ran to Lincoln near the Wash Migrating birds and swans go there to rest
Going South, there is the Pilgrim’s Way Canterbury, Becket,murder, prayer Julius Caesar, Deal, the Roman hordes Boudicea, and her fighting Lords
Layers of history, meaning,love and death Still we argue what should be our path
London is bewildered by its roads The Circular, the North,the South, the Codes The Morse and the Enigma Turing broke So now we have new bicycles with spokes
Once we had the A to Z in hand Turn it upside down and you’ll be grand New technology has made gigantic strides Carrying us to Eden ,what a ride
The motorways are empty for tonight God decided we had too much Light He taught the bare cheeked Moon on Jesus’ mount To turn the other side when love’s about
I liked to use a compass and a map But now, my dear, most everything’s on tap I crouch beneath my sister as she drives In the dark on the M 25
But if it’s closed, we are completely foxed We left the old Road Atlas in a box Along with all my ex’s underpants And naturally his principles of Kant
We may be in Watford or in Bucks I often wonder what will rhyme with luck We may be near St Alban’s, we can’t see The car ran up the trunk of this oak tree
We rang 999 and they are her A fire engine filled with Kentish beer A ladder for the ladies to climb down Now they are just women on the town
London won’t exist ,destroyed by cars Angry men who cannot find a bar
Women can’t wear frocks and aprons now We have to look like men but well endowed No man would wear a cardigan so long Behind his wardrobe it would soon be flung
Shorts are hot in summer, I shall sigh Why do women have to have a fly? If you need to pee while in a wood A skirt provides some cover for the flood
I’d like a dress like mother used to wear. As we walked to Grandad’s, she had flair She knitted lacy jumpers for the heat Even knitted wool socks for my feet
We look like alien creatures from elsewhere I’m going to wear my sundress, I don’t care.
One single tear expresses love and loss Dramatic storms excess may make folk pause Who will notice one tear and its cost?
A little stone near water may grow moss But only mountains bring a sense of awe One single tear expresses love and loss
Grief must not wallowed in, like baths Philosophers not hurt their minds uncaused Who then will observe the tear, the cost?
To an ant, a pebble is quite gross To a widow, death has hungry jaws One single tear may show how she is lost
The entire self is tear-filled like a marsh We weep till love itself becomes remorse Let one tear out and hide its anguished cost
The heart’s affections use poetic laws Holy circulation, blood that draws One single tear falls down like bladed grass Who will care for this tear, bear its cost?
What to me may seem a worthless weed Bears its little flowers to create seeds Thus it spreads itself as Love requires Humble speedwell,hear of our desires.
In the pavements cracks were home to grass The sidestep slabs were broken like thick glass When heavy frost came, rain formed frozen pools I trod in them as I tore up to school
The crackling ice, the mist dropped on the park Our ginger cat, the trees, the dog that barked Our mother in the kitchen making tea The oven by the fire, the big door key
Little signs spark tender memories The future fiction, gone the past abyss
Limestone’s softness lets its cracks appear Wildflowers,daisies,foxgloves love to grow While little rivers to the South Tyne veer
Alston on the hill to me is dear The main street in the winter’s under snow Limestone’s softness lets its cracks appear
Granite hard as marble seems to jeer Limestone lets the seeds and grass stay, While little rivers to the South Tyne veer
The savage Pennines can cause panic fear Their shadow in the sun, a fearsome layer Limestone’s softness lets its cracks appear
Do we shift our vision far and near? The panorama of the Lakes is fair The little rivers to the South Tyne veer
Limestone,like a woman, let’s love grow Thus it is creative ,heart and Art Limestone’s softness lets broad cracks appear Thus streams, well filled with seeds, are made home there
I used to know you loved me by your eyes Not the eyes of judgement cruel and dark Yet I need to learn to say goodbye
Every day deserted lovers cry Our eyes grow dim, they lose their living spark I used to know you loved me by your eyes
You were full of humour, I can’t sigh Remember swans, the frozen lake, the park? Now I need to want to say goodbye
Like a lark, your soul flew to the sky Near Studland Bay, where small birds seem to talk I used to know you loved me by your eyes
My tears fell like a curtain from each eye I could only see you in the dark Now I need the will to say goodbye
Though not violent, you have made your mark We got into that rhythm when we walked I used to know you’d love me till I died Even after death, I feel you by.
It is impossible that any Russian poem should survive, undamaged, magically transported into the English language. The simplest Russian word has no exact equivalent in English. A table is a different table. The food on it is different. The life around it is different. Its image, its behaviour as a word is different; rectangular and immutable in English, possibly round and probably inflected in Russian. Better to admit defeat at the outset. It will be a different poem. All the more important, therefore, to try and preserve whatever you can. Not only the sense, but the spirit of the thing conveyed through the rhyme, the rhythm, the music of the original. If you are not a poet when you start to translate poetry, you will be by the time you are finished. It becomes so natural a means of expression that you find yourself writing your own stuff.
Some translators, of course, were poets before they began. Great writers have translated other great writers. But you have only to compare the original with the translation to hear the persistence of the poet-translator’s creative voice, even while submitting himself to the discipline of faithfully following someone else’s ideas, someone else’s choice of the form in which they are to be expressed.
Since the thing, then, is inherently impossible, why try? Why do it at all? There are, of course, some advantages for the English reader. He can satisfy his curiosity. For instance, why all the fuss about Griboedov? What is this wonderful verse-comedy of his? What characters did he create, what views did he hold, what feelings did he express? Why is he so great? This last, alas, is a question which no translation will answer. No, the true beneficiary of any translation is the translator. There is no better way of valuing a work, getting under the skin of it, sucking the juice out of every last line of it, than trying to translate it.
I encountered Gore ot uma during my first year at London University, studying Russian language and literature. And here I must mention my only advantage over you Russians; I didn’t ‘do’ Gore ot uma at school. (Imagine reading it for the first time at sixty-two.) One of our professors gave a lecture on the literature of the early 19th Century. ‘There is this brilliant verse-comedy by Aleksandr Griboedov’, he said, ‘but it is completely untranslatable.’ The challenge was irresistible. I went to the library after the lecture, took out the play and started at once.
The problems were numerous. How to preserve Griboedov’s laconic style, compressed sometimes to the point of obscurity? What to do, for instance, with that reference to Tolstoi Amerikanets? Short of a footnote, how is the English reader to guess at that disastrous voyage of his? How to convey the irony implicit in Griboedov’s double game, in which Chatskii shows us the flaws in Moscow while Griboedov shows us the flaws in Chatskii? In the attempt to convey a sense of Griboedov’s masterpiece, one is required to joke like an ambitious bureaucrat, think like a revolutionary, feel like a Moscow socialite or a young man in love – in short, to jettision one’s own view of the world, and share, briefly, for the space of a play, the author’s – or his characters’ – experience of it. the problems are varied; the challenge is always the same. How to preserve the spirit of the original.
How the sky tried to turn black but the cloud thinned Leaving a dull yellow ochre, lightening slowly To cream A black cat leaped onto the fence I think he’s sleeping here But he never shows me his face He runs as if a banger has gone off behind him As if he’s going to take off like an aeroplane He hides in the dark green shade The honeysuckle chuckles, wishes to see more The wrens ignore him from their holly tree
Too prickly for domestic cats
Please lie down.Tell me what brings you here
Not literally? [ could be autistic]
No, you are always here in a sense.
Well, you know English is not my first language [ excuses]
No, you were here before language.How hard to imagine.
I have come here because of my guilt [ trying to be human ]
I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury, said cunning old fury
Very adroit [Shows off his skills]
What’s that?
The opposite of maladroit
Why did you send the Flood over the earth\~
I pressed the wrong button. [Teases me]
That is absurd. There were no buttons then
Not even on coats? [Pretends to be ignorant]
Well you should know
I don’t like little details in my creatiity [ Thinks he is superior]
Come on, tell me whatever comes to mind
I like playing with water and fire as well [ Melanie Klein come here]
You tell me
It’s such fun [ emotionally stunted]
Like War?
It was not so bad to start with { always an excuse…. lacking in adult responsibility]
What, even Cain and Abel?
Very sad but it’s just a story [ Derrida,Levinas, Enid Blyton]
Don’t tell me you are a post modernist
I can be what I want , for fun you know [ repeats himself]
I didn’t know God has fun
Well you do now [ Humour]
Right that is £120
What, you think I should pay? [ feels superior]
I have to live,Lord.I have a family [ childish plea]
So did I once [Sarcasm and grief]
Coming in, the whispers of your breath Float into avid ears, there is no death Your honey smell, your eyes so sharp and kind Evoke your image in the deeps of mind
I see your shadow swiftly move away There is no tomorrow, just today And you are here, your smile remains yet fades Deep in the woods of feeling there are glades
You do not hide, you exercise your tact You knew people’s faces, not the facts You said you felt so tender when we lay And smiled when we enjoyed ourselves at play
You hide inside the air,I breathe you in I let you go, I see you float again.
Fifty years since I became your bride
“What is true love which alters when it perspiration finds?”
