Read If There is Something to Desire Online
Authors: Vera Pavlova
Eternalize me just a bit:
take some snow and sculpt me in it,
with your warm and bare palm
polish me until I shine …
dropped
and falling
from such
heights
for so
long
that
maybe
I will have
enough time
to learn
flying
He marked the page with a match
and fell asleep in mid-kiss,
while I, a queen bee
in a disturbed hive, stay up and buzz:
half a kingdom for a honey drop,
half a lifetime for a tender word!
His face, half-turned.
Half past midnight. Half past one.
Spinner, do not hesitate:
while the kiss is fresh,
snip the two threads
with one swift cut.
On the chin, on its edge,
under the chin many a kiss …
The golden boat trembles
on the surface of closed eyes.
Hair, rowlocks, clavicles,
fuzzy skin, lilies, reeds …
Every particle of me knows
what has happened, what is bound to be.
And I proffer my face, my shoulders
to the miracle as to the wind.
Come and row. A child again,
I will sleep curled up on the stern.
If only I could elope
to share with you the roof and the road!
But it is easier to bend the Milky Way,
to straighten out the rainbow,
to put an end to the Chechen war,
to feed starving kids on songs.
Should I stop loving you? Wish I could!
Easier to build a house on the waves.
I spin my destiny myself,
in this I need no help.
They confiscated at the airport
the scissors from the Parca.
A ripe tear rolled off,
the frail shoulders shook.
But the customs fellow did not speak
a word of ancient Greek.
We would hide behind the house
to play the maternity ward:
would walk around with bellies stuck out,
with a shard of glass would scratch
the bellies that were feeling a chill
to make a white and pink line;
would say: it is up to you,
if the mother lives,
the baby will die,
or the other way around,
in short, it’s either-or,
and no other way out.
But there is. I should have slapped
the silly midwife for her lies,
should have proudly stormed out
of that stupid maternity ward.
I would do so now. But at the time
I bathed in the bliss of shame,
shielded the belly with my hand:
let the baby live.
A poem is a voice-mail:
the poet has stepped out, most likely
will not be back. Please leave a message
after you hear a gunshot.
The voice. The handwriting. The gait.
Maybe the smell of my hair.
That’s all. Go ahead,
resurrect me.
Only she who has breast-fed
knows how beautiful the ear is.
Only they who have been breast-fed
know the beauty of the clavicle.
Only to humans the Creator
has given the earlobe.
The humans, through clavicles
slightly resembling birds,
entwined in caresses fly
at night to the place where,
rocking the cradle of cradles,
the babe is wailing,
where on a pillow of air
the stars nestle like toys.
And some of them speak.
The author and the translator are thankful to Deborah Garrison, Derek Walcott, Valentina Polukhina and Daniel Weissbort, Alice Quinn, Yelena Demikovsky and Brian Singh, Cecile Roulet and Michael Wyler, and Svetlana Buyanina for their assistance and support in preparing this book for publication.
“One Touch in Seven Octaves” was first published in
Tin House.
“We are rich, we have nothing to lose,” “If there is something to desire,” “I think it will be winter when he comes,” and “Let us touch each other” first appeared in
The New Yorker.
“Am I lovely? Of Course!” “Those who are asleep in the earth,” “To converse with the greats,” “I am in love, hence free to live,” “Multiplying in a column M by F,” “When the very last grief,” “He marked the page with a match,” and “Only she who has breast-fed” first appeared in
Poetry
. “Armpits smell of linden blossom” first appeared in
Modern Poetry in Translation 20: Contemporary Russian Women Poets,
edited by Daniel Weissbort, guest editor Valentina Polukhina (London: King’s College).
Vera Pavlova was born in Moscow and graduated from the Gnessin Academy of Music with a degree in history of music. She began writing poetry at the age of twenty, and is the author of seventeen collections of poetry and the librettos to five operas and four cantatas. Her poems have been translated into twenty-one languages. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Apollon Grigoriev Grand Prize (2001). One of the four poems by Pavlova featured in
The New Yorker
was selected by the Poetry in Motion program and was displayed in subway cars in New York City, as well as in buses in Los Angeles. She is currently one of the best-selling poets in Russia.
If There Is Something to Desire
is Pavlova’s first collection in English.
Steven Seymour is a professional interpreter and translator of Russian, Polish, and French. His Russian translations of W. H. Auden, Charles Simic, James Tate, and Billy Collins have appeared in leading Russian literary magazines, while his English translations of Vera Pavlova’s poems have appeared in
Tin House
and
The New Yorker.
He has also translated poems by Zbigniew Herbert, Adam Zagajewski, and Wislawa Szymborska from the Polish, as well as almost all of the French poems of Rainer Maria Rilke into English. He lives in New York City.