Translated by Stanley Kunitz

1.

You live with your aunt. She’s addicted to ballads,
Snuffing and sneezing, thick in men’s underpants.
How we hate the old bag!
Thank God the barn is our friend, that big
Amiable bear, hugging us warm,
With its breath of the bee house.
And in Suzdal it’s Easter! . . .
Old walled town holy with hubbub and ravens.
You whisper on my cheek about your childhood,
That country childhood blest by sun and horses,
And honeycombs gleaming like icons.
The gleam of honey is on your braids.
I live in Russia — among snows and saints!

2.

You sit, pregnant and pale.
How you are changed, poor girl!
You sit pulling at your skirt
As you start to cry and cry . . .
No wonder we are spoiled!
Women, abandoned, fall to our lips,
Dash out at the crossing
When the train chugs off,
And stumble along the tracks,
Like you, staring at window streaks.
Mail trains, express trains rattle past
To nearby towns or vast Siberia . . .
And from Moscow to Ashkhabad,
Numbed and dumbstruck,
Women like monoliths stand,
Showing their bellies to the moon;
While the great-bellied earth,
Trapped in the bleak enormity of space,
As it spins to the light,
Interprets them.

These translations are taken from ANTIWORLDS, a collection of poems by Andrei Voznesensky, edited by Patricia Blake and Max Hayward and published by Basic Books.

© 1966 Basic Books