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:
- The Pact by Sharon Olds
- Now Hollow Fires Burn Out to Black poem – Alfred Edward Housman
- The Children’s Song by Rudyard Kipling
- Федор Сваровский – Речь на юбилее
- Orpheus by William Shakespeare
- The Lover Mourns For The Loss Of Love by William Butler Yeats
- Низами Гянджеви – От сердца всю ночь мечтал
- Untitled XII by Yunus Emre
- An Eare-Stringe by William Strode
- Hymn To Death poem – Alfred Austin
- Владимир Вишневский – Мой брат на много лет вперёд
- Sixteen Dead Men by William Butler Yeats
- Evolution by Sharmagne Leland-St. John
- Николай Глазков – Бабье лето
- Water Music 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
- The Brave and the Love Flute by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Walls at Drogheda by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- The Brave and the Love Flute by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Walls at Drogheda by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- The Brave and the Love Flute by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Be Not a War Poet by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Why the Young Men Are So Ugly by Tony Hoagland
- V by Tony Harrison
- Turns by Tony Harrison
- The Change by Tony Hoagland
- Special Problems in Vocabulary by Tony Hoagland
- Requests for Toy Piano by Tony Hoagland
- Reasons to Survive November by Tony Hoagland
- Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet by Tony Hoagland
- Quiet by Tony Hoagland
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.