Read an Excerpt
Apollo in the Grass
Selected Poems
By Aleksandr Kushner, Carol Ueland and Robert Carnevale Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2015 Carol Ueland and Robert Carnevale
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-374-71394-2
CHAPTER 1
1988–1996
APOLLO IN THE GRASS
Fine, then, lie in the grass. The thicker it grows
The less conspicuous is the white torso,
That much more futile the long trajectory
Of power's glare; the less glory
The more butterflies here, and wasps.
The more softly the word is pronounced
The more ardent, the more miraculous.
The less it dreams of becoming a song
That much nearer it draws to music,
The more burning, more useless.
The less show it makes of its gloom
The more blameless, the sadder,
Not calling for any loud phrases
About that press, that anvil,
Where, so many times, it was smothered.
Love is tragic, life frightening.
The brighter the white against the green ...
I don't know what I am guilty of.
The more hopeless the times
The stronger my friendship with Apollo.
The less hope of success
The more room for the soul.
Pierce me, arm me,
With the burning joy of a bee.
Like some great hailstone in the grass — fine, then, lie there.
These days, it would be boring, to be in London, to be in Paris.
Ah, dial up anyone, my friend, and the line is busy,
All who lived to see this are phoning one another.
God grant their wish, God grant them strength — and me too, now past
fifty.
Once again Russia is troubled by a time of great changes.
And I peck at the unforeseen fodder and go looking for groats
From History's hand, so tight with any kindness, slow to nod its assent.
"There, not so headlong! Heaven help you!" — but the voice is sullen and
stern.
I am no dove, no sparrow — And don't you forget
What kind of times I came up in, what darkness I witnessed.
Your time is unmeasured, your law is pegged to the ages,
Out of scale to our lifetimes — and the stern tone is in vain!
Though never the keenest up at the blackboard,
Here's what I know, and could demonstrate from anguish:
You spill, you scatter, grabbing the millet by handfuls, the hemp,
But I love this life despite it all and I do not love you.
Thus a sick man, as he recovers, looks out a window
Where a poplar stands in raw foliage, like a dark stain,
A bundle of hard sinews and outstaring veins.
And yet I feel sorry for those who did not live to see these times.
Nothing brings death closer for us
Than a desire come to fulfillment.
This is why Venice inspires
Not joy alone but also shudders,
Not just happiness but misgiving.
Right before us
Uncovered embraces: yearning, and delectation —
And that moist ray of light ... Danae, put on your dress,
Suck in your stomach, lock your hot bracelets
Back in the box ... Here they become
Frightening portents
Of impending doom: happiness comes,
The choice assignment, a trip abroad,
Keats died in Rome,
And Baratynsky was beguiled by the light blue
Of the waves, the brown skin of the muse.
How they gratify and wear us out — all these changes
Happening today!
Behind the hangings, hid in the depths,
History stands, like the procuress
In this painting, with her treacherous smile ...
Do we recall here the poet —
It was all there before him: he was happy in his mistake —
Or do we believe this sunlight, this bracelet?
What is music? — I do not know.
Could someone please explain it to me?
I enter the white hall, find a place on one side.
Life and death, and a plaint, and shame.
These sounds, how they sing, how they caress!
Many-stringed paradisal sin.
At once I'm seized, put under arrest, and carted off
Right here in front of everyone.
Not me — him! But he buried his face
In his hands and escaped, while I was lost.
For the auditory canal runs straight down
Into the heart, into that dusky flame.
So this is where real embarrassment lies — in hearing!
Life exposed to all its depth.
A moment ago I could look on life dryly.
Now that life is brushed off like a tear from a lash.
In this sense we are all unisexual. All of us
Peek through the same paradisal foliage.
You become strange to me, trousers and hemlines.
It is an androgyne who attends on the divine.
And love is totally different then,
Without insults and anguish.
The sound dies away. Expulsion from paradise.
The light is put out — Farewell! — the piano is closed.
I know you, know you, have you down pat, I live in your heart,
Live in your thoughts, like the powder-broom down in the culvert.
Why you don't sleep, why you smile in the dark I know.
Like a mouse behind the paneling, I quiet down in your mind.
I live in your heart, know you, know you, have you down pat,
For seven years — waking and sleeping — I have deputized clouds,
The clouds, the draft that bursts in on us through the open pane,
And that low osier-bed, which grows along the sodden banks.
I know you, know you, why you don't sleep — for you are
Not done yet gathering up the day's spoils
In your mind, entering your hard-won proceeds,
And now it must all be looked over once more, and sorted out.
You must take down a volume of poems — not a large one —
And run through it not just with your eyes but your soul,
And once more, in your mind, twirl through a phone conversation,
I know you, know you, why you're not sleeping even now.
You are not sleeping because water runs through your fingers
And you cannot get it all down, nowhere — not in notebook or journal —
It flows through, pours through, and everything is so suffused
With love and one starry ray that regret is just out of the question.
Give, oh give me the purple slippers with an upgathered toe
And an outfit embroidered in gold, with diamonds and amethysts;
How long can one go around in a sports coat, live on the dull brushwork
Of ordinary paintings and their wishy-washy hues?
How long can one read the papers, take one's tea, weary of pretense?
The Mycenean kings are brothers to me: some overthrown, some strangled.
One saved by a hasty retreat, one by his impersonation of the
garden drudge.
After, trembling in the tilted cart — sailed away aboard a ship, sped off in
a rented car.
Oh how interesting, how interesting to live,
To participate in the world's spectacle,
To be tossed down a sheer drop,
To be found in reeds and unwrapped by a nymph or a stork.
A friend betrays me, I am whispered about behind walls.
I have outlived five rulers, number six I like.
These days, when people speak of the "current mentality,"
I commend to their attention titmice somersaulting in the snow.
Ring, telephone, sing, gruff-throated Chorus, pass them along
Under your cloak, ancient maidservant, those little notes.
For what's the cheapest thing in the world? Tears.
They're not worth a thing. He said to her, "Don't cry, faithful
Greek." What is it about myrtle on a hero's sword?
Or, as we would put it these days, on the butt of his machine gun.
In this world only verses are glad to stand, mountainlike,
For the offended, so the line gets a bit humpbacked.
You will fall asleep with a lip bitten raw
Among major drunkards and minor thieves.
But there is one who'll cry at night over you —
Ovid, the world's first social parasite.
The vineyards of his native Italy kept
Appearing, far off, in dreams. And you,
On the train, what do you dream of?
Leningrad's inexpressible winter?
When snow sweeps in from the embankment,
And all but buries Liteiny, a man
Rises up, back to the wind,
In front of a small grocery store.
This is when the new verse line appears,
And it has no equal in power;
And now no defenders are left
To stand up for such precision.
Such a searing anguish
It is granted by right
A hard bunk in the convict-car
Burning up track to outrace fame.
You, soul, entelecheia, as you were called
Not by Plato, but that more hard-headed student of his,
You are worn out with sheer wasted ink,
So many lines of derivative language:
It is as though an innocent child were sent
To dwell in a hovel of thieves: we must take hold
Of his sleeve and not let go for anything,
However dismal the times and, unswayed by three-kopek sorrow,
Listen close for a few common roots that are
Surely a blessing, even if still undeciphered.
Just reach out your hand in the dark — there is
A star in the clouds and a breathing among the leaves.
This young Rembrandt, with his feline whiskers,
Thinks highly of himself, and of life as well.
Where's the harm in that — judge for yourself:
Wasn't there one who was worse yet at that age?
Is the sun going to rise into the sky tomorrow?
Is life going to end with us? — judge for yourself.
It's a shame, how suspicion grows with the years,
Those eyes burning with trust are so beautiful!
That shade of brown, more precisely, tobacco —
It's still hard to make out here who is cat and who mouse.
Not had enough yet, of the gloom, the circumspection?
Play with me, Fate, he begged, a little longer.
So, this buried malevolence keeps surfacing of its own will,
Until you're prepared to give way, to part with life and drag it
Down with you fast as you can into the grave —
But I am ashamed in front of the painter.
No one will ever wear a hat as he does, that's for sure.
A velvet one, with a soft, fluted brim.
And how can one upbraid him, especially from where we stand,
Knowing how, later, the darkness will thicken? — judge for yourself.
There where it's Spring, Spring, always Spring,
Where tender foliage eases the slope, and there
Are no black slanders, what a prize will Apollo
Confer on me! — that god dreamed up for poets.
While, here, the trunk of the poplar, overgrown tip-to-toe
With thick leaves, wreathes itself until it is lion-maned.
For bringing motifs like no others into this world
And a foreshortening all my own.
For, in an age when ideas went prowling the land
Like predators prowling the dark,
Praising the white cloth on the table
With its design as subtle as watermarks.
A poet is to critics as a boy is to flogging.
But I did not dance to that pipe.
For being deeply ashamed of these lines,
And renouncing them and making mock.
For gathering a certain music, like water into a sieve,
For those who lived the same way, on the margins,
For pliancy and the like, and for Not on your life,
And for je vous aime, ich liebe.
Dear Aleksandr, here where I write from, we have neither
The sirens (ah! the sirens with their mad voices!)
Nor the Cyclops — sitting
In their offices with their eyes, everything shipshape,
Over each a portrait on duty — Tell them all I say Hi.
We have no outlaws, no nymphs; however sad to say,
Apartments and grottoes, that's all there is.
As for rhymes,
As you can see, I've gotten the hang of that child's play
In a foreign tongue, recalling still the tides' ebb and flow.
A wave rustles
Bringing a wide-bellied bottle to my feet, a note
From my beloved country ...
Here where I write from, the sea sticks to the setting sun's disk
And the disk won't go down: dreams that don't "set" become torments.
Dear Aleksandr,
Next I'll explain why I chose you. True, much closer to me
Is unruly Archilochus, or old seven-string Terpander,
But a palm tree dreams of a pine, in its own snow-lit reddish beauty,
Not some gorse or oleander.
And, besides, the choice
Fell on unsociable you because, being the stay-at-home,
You skirted the islands, did not, by a mere eyelash, drop into the dark
Beyond Lethe, you said all you cared to, didn't deceive,
And remained
In anonymity's gracious shade. But when you die all you have said
Will be sorted out, much as an emerald or diamond's flame
Is drawn up to the eye.
How many grotesques you had to twist onto your finger! Don't fear
their articles,
Their fantasies — It's you who are deluded, literary gang!
You who are deluded, like that grazing herd of suitors. —
The traitor's lotos
Remains untasted, and you have still your homeland, your sorrows,
And your sins. A man dies, but verses survive.
Hail to the gentle mind and straightforward, masculine meekness.
Whether you, like me, were aided by God or by the swarthy gods,
Emerging as from a niche or the airy pit of a dream,
The chill embraced you,
Wafting love across to a country strewn with snow ...
I embrace you. Odysseus. (No need to reply.)
TO EVGENII REIN
The only thing better than Delft in this world is this Delft on canvas.
I was looking close at the yellow, dark blue, rose-colored wall.
Why oh why have I been given so lavish a present?
How he loved the textures of things, my favorite novelist!
He offered death to his hero, like joy, like a fresh page.
This moisture, dampness, the gloss on the lilies' batiste.
The lilies swim prettily on their small green plates.
They bloom, they prosper in the shade of sleepy canals.
To think now on things, on people lost — Heaven forbid! —
It is wrong-headed, offensive — as it would be in paradise.
I have wondrously distanced my life from myself.
Soviet power, the seething Congress, raging discord back home ...
To ride a bike, sit in a café, peruse in a paper
What they have to say about Moscow?
Why in the world is one life allotted, not two?
The whole surface of this small city is crazed by a watery spiderweb.
It's much too easy, is it not, to die here in front of the painting
A quick, sparrow-like death — one's cup of pride will not allow it.
I'll tell you what I finally understood, what I arrived at. The meaning's
Right there on the palm of your hand, evident, palpable: God conceived,
And I played it out, in this world of sorrows, this sea of troubles.
A wee bit of a bird putters around at my feet.
Now my words chime with the novelist's, and the painter's my kin.
Life is a searing habit, a solid gold snare.
It is frightening to live and, by the same token,
Not to live is not frightening. A happy dream —
Endless, even and deep, with us
Left out. To gain detachment
From attached rooms, alcoves,
Streets, friendships, conversing, doors ...
I recall hearing in boyhood, "Time to get up!
You'll sleep through it all!"
To sleep through it all! There is no more
Carefree condition. Already I've slept through
Troy, Diaghilev's ballet,
Olympia in her nightie,
Herod's entourage leaving the palace,
Pushkin dashing out from the porch ...
Why sigh, mourn, turn away from
The end, why cover your face?
I am mistaken to say that poems take
Precedence over biography, that what remains
Is the word and not the poet's image.
The example of Orpheus shakes my conviction.
Fate dealt with him sternly, and his transgression
Is more precious than if two or three lines
Of his could be got up for show
By mama's boy or daddy's little girl.
Not one came down to us — they didn't have to! Stalactites
Hang there like tears, anguish, the cold ...
So then, to stick in our minds, in our hearts,
On leaving hell, be sure to look back. Fall,
Having dropped your dueling pistol into the snow.
Or shoot yourself, leaving the chorus to carry on.
But poems ... that's a separate conversation,
A professional one, and disinterested.
Only once did our cold hands entwine ...
IN. ANNENSKY
I think I know where the anguished note comes from —
There is really nothing quite like it,
You don't hear it in Tyutchev or Fet —
Oh! The almost criminal pain, and the worry!
And that's what gave us such a poet!
Not in vain did he translate Euripides.
A moist, clandestine sun, as we have in March.
Having locked it all in, you've brooded hard, and kept up
Appearances — he must leave not a clue, and give it up!
The shrinking snow and the blank pain.
It's a masculine version of Phaedra.
And in a frock coat it's even worse,
And the silk tie foils consolation,
And the bland snow, and the Spring light,
And the stables squatting in steam, and the starling houses —
Growing more and more hopeless and more fraught with farewells.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Apollo in the Grass by Aleksandr Kushner, Carol Ueland and Robert Carnevale. Copyright © 2015 Carol Ueland and Robert Carnevale. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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