A poem by Alexander Pushkin – Pouchkine, Pooshkin (1799-1837), in English translation
Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
On and on our coach advances,
Little bell goes din-din-din…
Round are vast, unknown expanses;
Terror, terror is within.
— Faster, coachman! “Can’t, sir, sorry:
Horses, sir, are nearly dead.
I am blinded, all is blurry,
All snowed up; can’t see ahead.
Sir, I tell you on the level:
We have strayed, we’ve lost the trail.
What can WE do, when a devil
Drives us, whirls us round the vale?
“There, look, there he’s playing, jolly!
Huffing, puffing in my course;
There, you see, into the gully
Pushing the hysteric horse;
Now in front of me his figure
Looms up as a queer mile-mark —
Coming closer, growing bigger,
Sparking, melting in the dark.”
Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
We can’t whirl so any longer!
Suddenly, the bell has ceased,
Horses halted… — Hey, what’s wrong there?
“Who can tell! — a stump? a beast?..”
Blizzard’s raging, blizzard’s crying,
Horses panting, seized by fear;
Far away his shape is flying;
Still in haze the eyeballs glare;
Horses pull us back in motion,
Little bell goes din-din-din…
I behold a strange commotion:
Evil spirits gather in —
Sundry, ugly devils, whirling
In the moonlight’s milky haze:
Swaying, flittering and swirling
Like the leaves in autumn days…
What a crowd! Where are they carried?
What’s the plaintive song I hear?
Is a goblin being buried,
Or a sorceress married there?
Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
Swarms of devils come to rally,
Hurtle in the boundless height;
Howling fills the whitening valley,
Plaintive screeching rends my heart…
translated by: Genia Gurarie
email: egurarie@princeton.edu
Copyright ©:
Genia Gurarie
A few random poems:
- Виктор Гусев – Сестра
- Demon by Vladimir Marku
- Epitaph on William Muir by Robert Burns
- Robert Burns: Montgomerie’s Peggy:
- Dedication by Wole Soyinka
- Zero by Robert Creeley
- The Oak and the Rose by Shel Silverstein
- Intorduction to the Songs of Experience by William Blake
- Sonnet 143: Lo, as a careful huswife runs to catch by William Shakespeare
- Ode to My Guitar by William Wright Harris
- Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year by Raymond Carver
- For Fixation Who Loves Me Back poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Magic Moment I Remember poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Daniel Dwithen, The Wise Chap by William Barnes
- Ballad Of The Despairing Husband by Robert Creeley
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- ASHA APARTMENTS, 416, S.V. ROAD by Santosh Kumar Panda
- As if by Sara Herlihy
- Amity’s Death by SAAJIDA GORA
- America, America by Saadi Youssef
- A Writer’s Pen by Sahiti Siddharth
- A Traveller’s Guide to the East Indies by S. K. Kelen
- A sense’s addiction to chocolate by SAAJIDA GORA
- A Father’s Hands by Scott Ransopher
- The Unborn by Sharon Olds
- The Space Heater by Sharon Olds
- The Sash by Sharon Olds
- The Pact by Sharon Olds
- The Mortal One by Sharon Olds
- The End by Sharon Olds
- The Daughter Goes To Camp by Sharon Olds
- The Clasp by Sharon Olds
- The Borders by Sharon Olds
- The Arrivals by Sharon Olds
- Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds
- Primitive by Sharon Olds
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1937) was a Russian poet, playwright and prose writer, founder of the realistic trend in Russian literature, literary critic and theorist of literature, historian, publicist, journalist; one of the most important cultural figures in Russia in the first third of the 19th century.