He said to me:
Lazarus, come on, let’s get outta here
Where’s the sting,
I’ll get it out,
And if there’s a splinter left in your flesh
We’ll sort it.
And this red stuff, this krasny wet
This Ding, which doesn’t have a name,
Four days now in the corpse pit
Getting stronger and stronger and stood and left.
D
He said to me: Lazarus, come here.
He led me to the banqueting house
And his banner over me was love.
And his left hand was under my head,
And with his right hand he embraced me,
And another hand was placed, as always
On my forehead.
You hold my head with care
As if it were a basket filled with preparations for a feast,
Lined with spread branches of palm,
Filled to the brim with chocolate eggs
Figs, dates, trussed quails,
Fingers of sausage.
You hold my head like a basket
Decorated with ribbons,
And freshly greened twigs
Like a pretty easter basket
And in it lies my head.
Look after it, carry it carefully:
My features trickle through the bone like water.
Put it in a sack.
Put it in a pot.
Grow basil from it.
C
A Roman girl with a pile of flaxen hair
Drawn untidily into a knot
Sitting by the circular fountain
Speaking into her mobile phone.
A man in a leather jacket
On his darkleather body
Making sketches in a notepad
In carmine graphite.
A boy in Saratov. An old woman at the cash desk.
A man selling luminous plastic flying machines.
I want to be each of these people.
I want to live with each of them.
Enter their homes like air
Enter their bodies like an Easterly
Touch their swelling nodules with my tongue
Earlobes
Sea-blue proteins
White fur from elbow to wrist
Sleep’s shadow from navel to groin
Ribs, collarbones, shoulder blades,
Indigo work overalls
Black dress with tiny white spots
All this will be unavoidably resurrected
All this will be unavoidably avoided.
B
A hand buried at Marne.
A hand buried at Narva.
A hand lying in the Galician wastes.
The ash of a hand lying nowhere.
All of this will return.
And when we go to resurrect
A whole forest of stolen digits
Defamiliarised, unrecogniseable, thrown down,
Rustling in the wind above our heads,
Coming towards the rendez-vous
Like Birnam wood to Dunsinane.
And feet, legs, one-legged legs
In rotten boots (and boots boots) –
Leaden soldiers, fallen behind their unit
Units of stone, units of cloud
All these legs standing tall at the doors of inns
And crutches, like the papal ferula
Sprouting green shoots.
And empty, naked prosthetic limbs
Dance behind the cheering crowds like dogs.
And like sacks which once contained provisions
Eaten down to the last crumb
Poetry lies superfluous on the ground.
The train moves off. The blue shutters of summerhouses
At a station. The poplars rise like ladders.
A
De døde kan være så døde
At ingen kan se de er til*
so speaks poetry in Danish
but another speaks in a woman’s voice
another speaks in an English voice
an American woman in an English voice
when the woman who thought it in Danish
is so very dead that she
is almost invisible
but she still exists
…
…
…
they lie like earthed-up potatoes
they lie like forks in a drawer
like thoughts in someone’s head
and no one sees how
how very much
they are completely like us
even more so
alive
alive and so very living
you barely believe they are to be found
(picking through carbon chains)
and in what strange circumstances
we think they aren’t here
* ‘The dead can be so dead / That no one can see they exist’ is from the poem ‘Action’ in Inger Christensen’s It, translated by Susanna Nied.
About the Author
Maria Stepanova is a poet, essayist, journalist and the author of ten poetry collections and three books of essays. She has received several Russian and international literary awards (including the prestigious Andrey Bely Prize and Joseph Brodsky Fellowship). Her documentary novel In Memory of Memory (2017) won Russia’s Big Book Award in 2018 and was published in English in Sasha Dugdale’s translation by New Directions in the US and by Fitzcarraldo in the UK in 2021. Sasha Dugdale’s English translation of a selection of her poetry, War of the Beasts and the Animals, also appeared in 2021, from Bloodaxe.
Copyright
Copyright © Maria Stepanova 2021
Translation & foreword copyright © Sasha Dugdale 2021
This ebook first published 2021 by
Bloodaxe Books Ltd,
Eastburn,
South Park,
Hexham,
Northumberland NE46 1BS
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This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s PEN Translates programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org
Cover design: Neil Astley & Pamela Robertson-Pearce.
The rights of Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale to be identified as author and translator respectively of this work have been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN: 978 1 78037 535 9 ebook