Ocean of Earth To G. de Chirico I’ve built a home in the middle of the Ocean, Its windows are the rivers that flow from my eyesOctopuses are crawling wherever a wall is standingHear their triple hearts beat and their beaks tap on window panesDamp home Fervent homeRapid seasonSongful season The planes lay their eggs Look out they’re dropping anchorLook out they’re going to spurt ink
These two poems were written by Nabokov when he was in his early twenties. Both explore aspects of poetic creativity. “The Magician’s Shop” has an ironic tinge: the ambitious quest is treated with an image from the Icarus myth. “How Can I Explain?” is much more serious and conveys the difficult search for creativity. I could find no previous translations of these poems. The Magician’s Shop In a tiny shop on a castal side street,a magician in glasses and a blue-grey frock coat once sold
March The sun heats up to the seventh sweat,And the maddened ravine rages. Like the labours of a strapping farm girlSpring’s work is in full swing. Sick with anemia, snow shrinksImpotently on blue-veined branches.But life is steaming in the cowshedAnd the tines of the pitchfork radiate health. Those nights, those days and nights!The drumming from the melted snow at noon,The wasting away of icicles from the roof, The chattering of sleepless streams! Everything is wide open, stable and cowshed.
Vladimir Nabokov wrote a lot of poetry in his teens and early twenties. While this poetry does match the work of contemporaries like Akhmatova and Mandelshtam, it still shows a good poetic mind. Much of Nabokov’s early verse has not been translated into English. Here are five poems the young Nabokov wrote about Autumn. Autumn Dance Spin, fall down… We—dark-skinned dryads—are both happy and not happy with the autumn rustle:the forest is bare, and the fauns can see us,
OstinatoUnder the buzzard’s circling point of stillnessthe ocean rolls on thunderously in daylight,blindly chews its bridle of seaweed and snorts foam over sea shores. The earth is covered by darkness which batsnavigate. The buzzard stops and becomes a star.the ocean rolls on thunderously and snorts foam over sea shores. Thomas TranströmerTranslated by John Cobley
Guillaume Apollinaire didn’t write many nature poems, but these two autumn poems are remarkable. They were written in his early thirties and published in Alcools (1913). “Ailing Autumn,” which is often translated as “Sickly Autumn,” is notable for its images, especially the sound images (rumeurs in the French, which has no exact equivalent in English). The sounds move brilliantly from fallen fruit to trampled leaves to the train and finally to life itself. I am not comfortable with Apollinaire’s inclusion of the innocent water nymphs. But this poem comes from a different time over a century ago.
GrodekAt evening, autumn forests resoundWith deadly weapons across the golden plainsAnd blue lakes, while overhead the sunRolls on more darkly. Night embraces The dying warriors and the wild lament 5Of their mangled mouths. Yet silently in the pastureland, Red clouds inhabited by an angry godGather shed blood, lunar coldness. All roads lead to black decay. 10
WONDERFUL AUTUMN The unprecedented autumn built an immense dome;The clouds were ordered not to darken it. And people marveled: September is moving on.Where are the freezing, damp days?The murky canal waters have turned emerald;The nettles were smelling like roses, only stronger. It was sultry from sunrise, unendurable, diabolical, scarlet.All of it would stay with us to the end of our days.The sun was like a rebel entering the capital.And springlike autumn caressed it so ardently,As if the translucent snowdrops would soon turn white …
The grey day drags on,Rain streams cheerlesslyAcross the porch and front doorAnd into my open windows. Behind the fence along the roadThe public garden is flooded.Like beasts in their lair,The clouds sprawl about in disorder. In such bad weather I imagine A book about the beauty of the world. 10I draw a wood nymph For you on the title page. Marina, it’s been a long time,But it wouldn’t be that much troubleTo transfer your neglected ashes