Olga Sedakova
Translated from the Russian by Martha Kelly
My grandmother's azure ring,
my great-grandfather's books—
those are things I'd give away.
But somehow I'd regret
giving away the glass beads.

They're colorful and they're simple
like a garden with peacocks in it,
but they've a heart of stars and scales.

Or a lake with fish in it:
a black one swims up, then a scarlet one,
then the meekest, meekest green one—
it will never again return,
and why should it return?

I love neither poor nor rich,
not this country, nor any other,
not the time of day, nor the time of year—
but I love all things imagined and blamed:
a mysterious revelry
with no value and no meaning.


Бусы

Лазурный бабушкин перстень,
прадедовы книги —
это я отдам, быть может.
А стеклянные бусы
что-то мне слишком жалко.

Пестрые они, простые,
как сад и в саду павлины,
а их сердце из звезд и чешуек.

Или озеро, а в озере рыбы:
то черный вынырнет, то алый,
то кроткий, кроткий зеленый —
никогда он уже не вернется,
и зачем ему возвращаться.

Не люблю я бедных и богатых,
ни эту страну, ни другие,
ни время дня, ни время года —
а люблю, что мнится и винится:
таинственное веселье.
Ни цены ему нет, ни смысла.
from the book THIS IS US LOSING COUNT: EIGHT RUSSIAN POETS / Two Lines Press
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"Beads" comes from one of Olga Sedakova's most iconic cycles, "Old Songs (Starye pesni)." Sedakova likes to say that poems usually comes to her in books (or long cycles); each of these books is unique in diction, scope and feel. Unlike, for instance, her cycle "Stanzas in the Manner of Alexander Pope," "Old Songs" privileges the folkloric above the clearly erudite. Written between 1980-81, the poems evoke new expressions of old wisdom, inspired by Sedakova's beloved grandmother.

Martha Kelly on "Beads"
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via THE GUARDIAN
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"And when one takes last enough time, something can happen, an event, a sequence — unexpected. This phenomenon, without precedent, makes possible so much. To persist. Vibrate. Move. Resist. Founder. Transform. Separate. Shine — or not. In the breath of words are sounds, sensations, thoughts, meanings, objects, actions, passions, questions — random, rendered, phrased, fractals, ellipses, textualities, poems."
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