Mind Over Matter. 72 assorted poems in English by a Russian. Leonid Sboyko

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      If in a place of many

      You don’t have a penny

      The many around you won’t probably help:

      Life ain’t so sunny

      Where everyone’s running

      For nothing but money.

      It cannot be helped.

      Deep, very deep in the taiga forest

      Where the beautiful fir-tree grows

      A squat plain log-built loner’s cottage

      Stands in the thick of the grove.

      The ski-path meandering endlessly through

      The realm of the evergreen muffled with snow

      Brings me to the hut not really soon —

      I’ve come here to spend time alone.

      Cold and tired but happy and hopeful

      I stoke up the oven and unpack the victuals.

      The sky is starry, the flame is joyful,

      Life seems so suddenly simple.

      Don’t talk to me

      The way the talk should be,

      Talk to me free,

      Don’t sing to me,

      For all I want from thee

      Is just sincerity.

      So don’t talk to me

      Like they talk on TV,

      Don’t quarrel with me

      Like they do in the movies,

      But do it sincerely,

      Do it upfront,

      Do it so thoroughly

      I am right away stunned;

      Don’t do it right,

      But do it your way,

      Do it at night

      And during the day.

      Don’t talk to me

      The way the talk should be,

      Talk to me free.

      Hometown-bound

      A long steel rail

      That we all have seen

      With its maddening steadiness

      And its lamp-side sheen

      Carries on carrying us

      To the places we’ve been

      Helping to go back

      To the pasts long gone…

      Some nice, some lived irreversibly wrong.

      People who live there

      Live on in our past

      Which seems to be bound

      To always last.

      The subject can be narrow or broad:

      It ranges from ‘lapel’ to ‘Lord’,

      It may be quite a panorama

      But here’s today’s communication drama:

      It’s never deep however broad:

      We listen but we soon get bored.

      Recurring to computers, TV, books,

      Indulging in embellishing our looks,

      We shallower soon become,

      To coreless, flashy life succumbed.

      When Russia was said to have been sold

      I wasn’t sold on that:

      The heart of this country is inert to gold,

      The song is infinitely sad.

      One hundred yards they sleep underneath

      The stormy chest of the Barents Sea

      In an iron, iron black submarine

      Day after day into eternity…

      Penned captain-lieutenant, ‘We’re twenty-three’…

      …‘we’ll be twenty-three and here we’ll be’…

      I will see a whole world

      But everywhere I go

      I will see the sky above

      Now high and now low

      I will breathe the air

      Everywhere I go

      I will be myself

      Whatever I may know.

      That’s Russia

      You will never translate it into your own language

      So let me talk to you in your own tongue.

      I’ve been living here for many a year

      Couldn’t help looking here at many a thing

      Seen many a foreigner in and to this country

      Foreigners by passport and foreigners convinced

      Strangers changing attitudes by seconds

      Strangers largely to themselves

      Many a madman have I seen too

      Many who died to know what to do

      Many a bright head locked in a madhouse

      Many a sage man, many obtuse

      Many a small man saying Russia is great

      Many in love with it, many in hate

      Many who added they can’t understand it

      Many explaining: ‘Russia’s just vast’

      Some say that Russia has always been still

      Others remark it has always been ill;

      Many СКАЧАТЬ