Seeking Ratushinskaya poems

Sun Aug 5 09:48:56 UTC 2007

Dear friends:

Due to Hurricane Katrina, I apparently lost a number of Russian books 
that were either misplaced or destroyed. One of them is Stikhi by Irina 
Ratushinkaya. The book is no longer available from the publisher. If any 
of you have a copy of this book or of her poetry in general, may I ask 
if you could scan the Russian originals for the following six 
translations/adaptations that I did based on material from her book. The 
title is my own, but you can easily locate the first line of each poem 
at the bottom of each poem. Here are the six poems of my mini-cycle. I 
would be much obliged for your kind help. Thank you so much.

INFERNO

by Benjamin Sher after Irina Ratushinskaya

1.
Under a bloody comet --
The angels of the Apocalypse thrust their bayonets
Into the sky's swollen belly, spilling unripe stars
Like octaves of broken chords
Fleeing the vortex
Of a collapsing grand piano.

We too are crawling away at breakneck speed.
But where to? To what fields of sacrifice?
Like scrolls ripped open from the sanctuary
Of a violated synagogue,
His killing fields
Stretch in perpetuity.

What good are our deeds
When the Lord of Hosts Himself
Cannot cancel a single syllable of Cain's decree
Or restore us to our prime
By striking the tuning-fork
Of His unhinged creation?

("Tam na nebe pogrom?" Odessa. [?], 1979)

2.

How shall we save anyone
with the warmth of our tears
When the burnt-out star that is wormwood
has fallen into our midst,
Bringing in its wake a flood
of insupportable darkness?
When the ship to the hereafter
has already weighed anchor
When the ripples of anguish
have fully died down,
Giving way to silence
still as broken glass?

The hour of my grief,
luminous with a thousand eyes,
Lies at my feet
like a dog from another world.
I stroke its back:
"we'll crawl, you and I,
to the fire that is dying,
though we are destined
never to reach it,
To the hand rolling up the heavens
like a parchment scroll,
though we are destined
never to kiss it.
You and I shall face our interrogator
beyond the grave
in a last act of mutiny.
What's the matter?
You aren't afraid, are you?!
Ok, big dog, it's time.
It's time for us to go."

("Kogo uzh tut spasat' proplakannym teplom..."
Kiev. [?], 1979)

3.

The path is steep. And arduous.
The time has come to take the final leap,
The one I have prepared for like a dancer.
Ascending head first into the ethereal sky,
I become giddy and, like a young ballerina,
Bow to the squinting fields below,
Ready to receive their curious applause.
Abandoning them, I look up towards
Sheets of ice beckoning me like a halo
Or like a funeral wreath woven out of icicles
Melting into the new-born Spring.
And my heart, like a sacrificial goat,
Trembles before the next ridge.
Flint and sulphur appear out of nowhere
To guide my dim vision.
My every move on the weightless stage
Is watched as if in a dream:
In terror, balancing on the point
Of feverish ecstasy and madness,
I push my body forward,
Afraid of yielding up the ghost.
I look down the arches of the sun
As they leap from peak to peak,
Down to the valley below!
No, I am not the last to climb
This scaffolding of stones. But it's too late
For a graceful exit, for a retreat.
Or fashionable swooning. In my delirium,
I hear the voice of a dreamy-eyed boy,
His face lined with burning visions of glory,
His fingers clutching his over-sized pillow,
As he mutters fitfully in his god-forsaken sleep:
Reach for the stars!”

("Vsyo kruche tropa -- predstalo..." Awaiting trial. KGB prison. Kiev. 
Nov., 1982)

4.

 From the fury of His chisel the stars fled,
While He, stooping in His workshop,
Beat into shape the resistant firmament,
That throbs with frail encampments of ice.
Hold on, don't let go! -- The new moon
Is swinging into its appointed place in the sky.
You close your stony eyes, and a skater
Skims into view, rhythmically measuring out
Tortured rings with legs bent down and out
Like compasses.

This black-and-white engraving of winter
Has no room for shadows, for ambiguous hints.
All stands out in bold, thunderous relief,
The Word made flesh in the folds
Of a frozen cell, where, like a nun,
I move five steps to the cloistered window,
Where, four steps from silent wall to wall,
Blinks absurdly, to catch me in the act,
The blood-shot eye of a judas-hole.
Interrogators shuttle past my mind
In cunning monotone, while a young guard,
A real trooper, joins in the innocent, coarse fun.
Oh, what serenity to wander silently
Through this barren landscape, holding tightly
To the monosyllabic "No!" that seeks to escape
Through the cold sores of my lips!
The snow-encrusted pendulum has yielded
To the elements, leaving me to search
Through my memory for the prophetic hour.
Yes, my eyes are darker and my forehead
More feverish than ever as I carve out
The initials of my testimony on the wall.
By God, I'll make it yet to the final act,
Leaping over fever and heightened crisis
To fulfill a destiny inscribed in the stars.
As I take to the road, God's hand rests
Warmly on my shoulder.

("Kruto syplyutsia zvyozdy, i kholod v nebesnykh selen'iakh?" Awaiting 
trial. KGB prison. Kiev. Dec., 1982)

5.

What is a calendar? A blueprint for creation!
Each February augurs its own season's lilac,
Displacing one grief with the buds of another
Beneath a sky where carrion crows stretch out
Nature's riotous design. Still, the old grief,
Refusing to let go, has grafted itself
Into my flesh and burns with abandon.

The old men, scraping the icy pelt
 From the asphalt, spread an unearthly salt
On sidewalks moist with layered dreams.
In our utopian minds they rise like cotton candy,
Like rainbow seeds. Alas, we have lost
The taste for sharing our joys, for grasping them,
Like a clumsy woman who has dropped an armful
Of packages in the snow! Yet, there is more
Than enough left over for everyone, for everything.

Oh, the transparent sign of impending change,
The happy plunging of oars in the river of time!
The stamp of ingenue warmth, of wet mittens,
Lies on the snowdrift crust: shivering microbes,
Feeling their way from non-being, take everywhere
Into the air, while the constellations of spring,
Climbing out of their dens, cast off the dull scent
Of moth-balls. And God, having fashioned
His children out of dark, wet clay, dams up

The mindless torrent with the building blocks
Of what remains on earth.

("Chto kalendar'? Formal'nost' bytiia!" Awaiting trial. KGB prison. 
Kiev. February, 1983)

6.

His name was invoked through the archipelago.
In the cattle-cars, they bellowed out his heroic exploits
Until the walls shook with sweat. In the margins
Of their dispatches they scribbled glorious news
About him to their mothers. They ranted and raved
In solitary, their delirious faces drowned out
By the halo of his good deeds.

How long has he been here? No one remembers.
But who could forget the pitiful ration he shared
And his bitter tea. Like a fool, he gave his coat
To a felow outcast at the transit station,
Who could ever forget that in the camps
He fed the hungry and desolate with provisions
Wormed out of the state? Confusing rumor
With facts beyond human comprehension,
We wondered aloud: how did he end up here?
Why was he arrested? Some said: because he loved.
Others whispered: because he was mad.
Still others let on that he was a true believer:
He turned their meaningless rations
Into a sea of loaves and sausages
And did not balk at healing them
 From scabs or lice. And he took pity
On women, understood them, absolved them,
Never commanded that they stop sinning.
He subdued their pain by laying on of hands
And by preaching: "You are God's wild beasts.
No cages can hold you still. Let your souls
Leap into the dark?"

And his most loyal disciples sold him out
For a case of vodka, and he said to them:
"What can one expect of you?
Your souls are tame, but your hearts
Lack the flint of kindness." Only rarely
Did his anger burst forth. Yet, the inmates
Spoke glowingly of how he had broken
The spirit of an informer, whom he had taken
Under his wing, for squealing on his neighbor.
Some, having toiled and sweated long sentences,
Left the prison, while others waited in vain
For an amnesty. But he, being seditious,
Wouldn't settle for such an unnatural release.

Four of his fellow convicts, returning home,
Recorded in scrupulously bound pages
Their faithful impressions of life in captivity
With a sovereign disregard for their state.
The authorities laid their hands on them all
And attached their notebooks, one by one,
To uncompromising dossiers.

And they took him away -- God knows where.
If you want to know his whereabouts --
Whether in the salt mines or in fields of exile
Or beneath the crust of the Siberian ice --
Turn to your neighbor on the road to Calvary
And ask.

("O nem tolkovali po vsem lageriam?" Awaiting trial. KGB prison. Kiev. 
March, 1983)

Russian Translator:
Benjamin Sher

-- 
Sher's Russian Web
http://www.websher.net
Benjamin Sher
sher07 at mindspring.com

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