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anna akhmatova
solitude
So many stones have been thrown at me,
That I'm not frightened of them anymore,
And the pit has become a solid tower,
Tall among tall towers.
I thank the builders,
May care and sadness pass them by.
From here I'll see the sunrise earlier,
Here the sun's last ray rejoices.
And into the windows of my room
The northern breezes often fly.
And from my hand a dove eats grains of wheat...
As for my unfinished page,
The Muse's tawny hand, divinely calm
And delicate, will finish it.
--
all good things - jobe
anna akhmatova
the last toast
I drink to our ruined house,
to the dolor of my life,
to our loneliness together;
and to you I raise my glass,
to lying lips that have betrayed us,
to dead-cold, pitiless eyes,
and to the hard realities:
that the world is brutal and coarse,
that God in fact has not saved us.
Translated from Russian by Stanley Kunitz & Max Hayward
"Nude Anna Akhmatova I" by Amedeo Modigliani
All Good Things - Jobe
Anna Akhmatova 1889-1969
3 poems
"Yes I loved them, those gatherings late at night,—"
Yes I loved them, those gatherings late at night,—
the small table, glasses with frosted sides,
fragrant vapor rising from black coffee,
the fireplace, red with powerful winter heat,
the biting gaiety of literary joke,
and the first helpless and frightening glance of my love.
--Translated by Jane Kenyon
--
"Wild honey has the scent of freedom"
Wild honey has the scent of freedom,
dust--of a ray of sun,
a girl's mouth--of a violet,
and gold--has no perfume.
Watery--the mignonette,
and like an apple--love,
but we have found out forever
that blood smells only of blood.
1933
--Translated by Jane Kenyon
--
To the Many
I -- am your voice, the warmth of your breath,
I -- am the reflection of your face,
The futile trembling of futile wings,
I am with you to he end, in any case.
That's why you so fervently love
Me in my weakness and in my sin;
That's why you impulsively gave
Me the best of your sons;
That's why you never even asked
Me for any word of him
And blackened my forever-deserted home
With fumes of praise.
And they say -- it's impossible to fuse more closely,
Impossible to love more abandonedly. . .
As the shadow from the body wants to part,
As the flesh from the soul wants to separate,
So I want now -- to be forgotten..
September 1922
-- translated by Judith Hemschemeyer
--
from Tim Kahl:
The Sacramento Poetry Center
Presents
Shawn Pittard and LaVerne Frith
Monday July 27 at 7:30 PM
HQ for the Arts
1719 25th Street
Shawn Pittard is the author of These Rivers, a chapbook of poems from Rattlesnake Press. His poems, essays, and book reviews appear in a variety of publications, and he's written a screenplay, Junk Sick, with his brother, Trent. He holds degrees in fine arts, geography, and urban planning. He also writes for The Great American Pinup [http://www.greatamerican.pinup.blogspot.com].
Shawn Pittard
FALL CREEK
There’s a door in the bottom of the freestone stream
at the bend below the railroad grade.
On my birthday, I dared to open it, figuring
I’d lost most of what I had to lose by fifty.
Under the door, the water was drinkable,
like it was when I was a boy scout.
Crayfish still crawled everywhere.
A speckled trout swam by
with my lost hook in its mouth.
My front tooth sparkled in the gravel bed
near the piece of my right knee the orthopedist removed.
My dog’s front leg was down there, too, lost
when chasing horses into traffic on Las Flores.
I found the years my brother lost to heroin
entangled with my parents’ savings
and the confidence my sister locked
outside the gates to her community.
The Navajo girl I wanted to lose my virginity
with was lovely as the last time I saw her—
sitting politely with her host family in church.
The luster of her black hair
more mysterious underwater.
I found my fear of dying
and someone I assumed was God tried to catch my eye.
I feigned fascination with the pocketknife
my father-in-law gave me one Christmas.
It had rusted considerably.
Later that day, fishing downstream
in the moonrise, I wished I’d said something
to the twin sister
all boys are told to bury at their birth.
Laverne Frith is co-editor of the poetry journal Ekphrasis. His chapbooks are In the Translated Day (White Heron Press, 2004), In a Fast Food Place (Talent House Press, 1999), Sky After Summer Rain (Choice of Words Press) Drinking the Light (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and The Range of Seeing (Finishing Line Press, 2008). Among his many awards are a 2004 nomination for the Pushcart XXIX Prize by Adept Press, a runner-up finish in the 2004 & 2005 Louisiana Literature Award and honorable mentions in the Common Ground and Quercus competitions in 2004. Winner of the Nostalgia Poetry Award, he was awarded an HM in the New Millennium competition in April 2003 and semi-finalist in New Millennium in December 2003. His publication credits include Poetry New York, Louisiana Literature, The Christian Science Monitor, Sundog: the Southeast Review, The Comstock Review, The Montserrat Review, California Quarterly, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Perihelion, Main Street Rag, New Zoo Poetry Review, Blue Unicorn, Kimera, and others.
Laverne Frith
Encountering Christ And The Magdalene
(after Rodin; California Palace of the Legion of Honor)
the amazing qualities of marble
are what allowed him to deal
with this, a scene so stark
it required a secret knowledge
of the pale patina, the majesty
and tragedy of the heavy cross,
the humble head of the Christ
resting in the cusped arm
of Mary, while her head
is drooped in dread into his ribs
don't you imagine that here
blood looks like real blood
that oozed from these wounds
that sorrow and hope
have somehow mingled
in the mind of Rodin
have driven his chisel by
his skillful hands
so many times
across all this bleached
and enveloped terrain
--
all good things. jobe.
--
Anna Akhmatova
1889-1966
Anna Akhmatova is the literary pseudonym of Anna Andreevna Gorenko. Her first husband was Gumilev, and she too became one of the leading Acmeist poets. Her second book of poems, Beads (1914), brought her fame. Her earlier manner, intimate and colloquial, gradually gave way to a more classical severity, apparent in her volumes The Whte Flock (1917) and Anno Domini MCMXXI (1922). The growing distaste which the personal and religious elements in her poetry aroused in Soviet officialdom forced her thereafter into long periiods of silence; and the poetic masterpieces of her later years, A Poem without a Hero and Requiem, were published abroad.
--
Song about Song
So many stones have been thrown at me
That I don't fear them any longer
The trap an elegant tower has become,
Among tall towers, the taller.
I'm grateful to their builders - so be gone
Their sadness and their worry, go away,
Early from here I can see the dawn
And here triumphant lives the sun's last ray.
And frequently into my room's window
The winds from northern seas begin to blow
And pigeon from my palms eats wheat...
The pages that I did not complete
Divinely light she is and calm,
Will finish Muse's suntanned arm.
--
Answer
The quiet April day has sent me
What an unusual, strange missive.
You knew that passionately in me
The scary week is still alive.
I did not hear those ringing bells
That swam along in glazier clear.
For seven days sounded copper laugh
Or poured from eyes a silver tear.
And I, then having closed my face
As for eternal parting's moment,
Lay down and waited for her grace
That was not known yet as torment.
--
untitled poems
--
We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day -
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.
--
My voice is weak, but will does not get weaker.
It has become still better without love,
The sky is tall, the mountain wind is blowing
My thoughts are sinless to true God above.
The sleeplessness has gone to other places,
I do not on grey ashes count my sorrow,
And the skewed arrow of the clock face
Does not look to me like a deadly arrow.
How past over the heart is losing power!
Freedom is near. I will forgive all yet,
Watching, as ray of sun runs up and down
The springtime vine that with spring rain is wet.
---
He was jealous, fearful and tender,
He loved me like God's only light,
And that she not sing of the past times
He killed my bird colored white.
He said, in the lighthouse at sundown:
"Love me, laugh and write poetry!"
And I buried the joyous songbird
Behind a round well near a tree.
I promised that I would not mourn her.
But my heart turned to stone spite my choice,
And it seems to me that everywhere
And always I'll hear her sweet voice.
--
In the sleep to me is given
Our last eden of stars up high
City of clean water towers,
Golden Bakchisarai
There behind a colored fencing
By the pensive water stalled
Gardens of the Tsar's Village
With rejoicing we recalled.
And the eagles of Catherine
Suddenly recognized - it's that!
He had flown to valley bottom
From the ornate bronze-clad gate.
That the song of parting heartache
In the memory longer lives,
The dark-bodied mother autumn
Brought to me the reddening leaves
And she sprinkled on her soles
Where we parted in the sun
And from where for land of shades
You had left, my soothing one.
--
English translation by Ilya Shambat
--
All Good Things. Jobe.
--
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