Contents

Title Page

Preface by Stephanie Sandler 

Introduction by Daniel Weissbort

A Note on Transliteration 

 

BELLA AKHMADULINA

translated by Catriona Kelly

In the Botkin Hospital

To Await Arrival

POLINA BARSKOVA

translated by Peter France

Evening at Tsarskoe Selo

[The poet has passed away]

TATYANA BEK

translated by Robert Reid

[Beneath the flakes of Russian snow]

[We’ve all got history on our hands …]

NATALYA BELCHENKO

translated by Robert Reid

[I’d happily survey the world]

[It’s boring looking at the same old contents]

[Chameleons are fine]

LARISA BEREZOVCHUK

translated by Richard McKane

[Calm rocks to sleep in your usual place]

MARINA BORODITSKAYA

translated by Ruth Fainlight

[Now I am a fan of silence]

Christmas Eve

Sound Letter

[So much gentleness from unknown men]

[Poor composer]

EKATERINA BOYARSKIKH

translated by Richard McKane

[A person is reflected by the whirlpool, not the face]

ZINAIDA BYKOVA

translated by Robert Reid

[Close of day]

At the Stop

[Potatoes in flower]

SVETLANA DENGINA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

Autumnal Equinox

Russia

REGINA DERIEVA

translated by Kevin Carey, Alan Shaw

[I don’t feel at home where I am]

[Beyond Siberia again Siberia]

[On the sea-shore, smell of iodine]

Theory of Recruiting

MARINA DOLIA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

from Silence

IRINA ERMAKOVA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[… toward morning around seven]

Gethsemane

Lullaby for Odysseus

GALINA ERMOSHINA

translated by Gerald Janecek

[And alsothe Minotaur, farmer, owner, respondent]

[Autumn your bellringing, the apple of bright weeping]

ZOYA EZROKHI

translated by Daniel Weissbort

A Day at Home

Repetition

ELENA FANAILOVA

translated by Stephanie Sandler

[Better this way: its you with nothing to hold on to]

Frida’s Album (Frida Kahlo’s Album)

NINA GABRIELIAN

translated by Peter France

A Phoenician Statuette

Tortoise

from the cycle Erebuni

MARIYA GALINA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

Ghazal

[What, in July’s honey heat, do you weep for, poor goy]

[I said to him—Just dont throw me into that briar patch]

DINA GATINA

translated by Chris Jones

[I’m being stalked by a bird]

[My eyes are]

ANNA GLAZOVA

translated by Max Nemtsov

solo

the grant of death

from Cities

LINOR GORALIK

translated by the author, revised by Robert Reid

[Here I am]

[Every few weeks I see there is an empty chair in our local nursery]

NATALYA GORBANEVSKAYA

translated by Elizabeth Krizenesky Daniel Weissbort

[I will not be able to explain why]

[The rhymes picked me in a ditch]

[What I drink is not hot, not sweet]

[We livesometimes]

Notes of a Cold War Veteran

[Epiphanies]

ANNA GORENKO

translated by Peter France

[There the folk museum alone lies in its embers]

[Flowers live faster than rotting of cherries]

[death covers up nakedness]

[houses like piles of children’s books]

Translated from the European

NINA GORLANOVA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

Three-Liners

FAINA GRIMBERG

translated by Richard McKane

[The reflection of a wet finger …]

ELENA IGNATOVA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[Then there was the rose I fell in love with]

[To sob, pressing oneself against the officer’s greatcoat]

NINA ISKRENKO

translated by Stephanie Sandler

Another Woman

OLGA IVANOVA

translated by Jenefer Coates

To Russian Women

[Do I hold the past in my hands]

[Time turned inside out]

[I meet myself each and every day]

SVETLANA IVANOVA

translated by Jenefer Coates, Angela Livingston

[O caterpillar, daughter of the butterfly]

[Bird, start up your moan, your whine]

Subterranean River Poem

INNA KABYSH

translated by Fay Marshall and Alex Marshall

Making Jam in July

[Whenever the prodigal son returns home]

KATIA KAPOVICH

translated by Richard McKane

[Something from an untidy Russian life]

[Parting makes simple sense]

SVETLANA KEKOVA

translated by Ruth Fainlight

[Space is arched like a sail]

[With much effort, I glimpse in the darkness and rubbish]

[Running water is cold, the river from Eden flows east]

[The tsar sits on his throne as if he sat on bones]

[Look, a man is flying and]

[Already, no more suffering, no]

MARINA KHAGEN

translated by Linor Goralik

[in the branches’ shade]

OLGA KHVOSTOVA

translated by Tatyana Retivova

Flood Songs

MARIYA KILDIBEKOVA

translated by Roy Fisher

[Pizza’s a populous island]

[Everybody was going on talking the same talk]

NINA KOSSMAN

translated by the author

[A bomb said to a city]

Cassandra to Agamemnon

Backward Sound

ELENA KOSTYLEVA

translated by Max Nemtsov

[A vacancy instead of you]

IRINA KOVALEVA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[I can still make you out]

[… And there was beauty]

ELLA KRYLOVA

translated by Yury Drobyshev and Carol Rumens

The Pilgrims

Cornflowers

MARINA KUDIMOVA

translated by Catriona Kelly

[Prison, zona, the camps, Taldái-Kustanái, and the low road]

[The pleated strata of air]

INNA KULISHOVA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[Till now]

[Total darkness]

YULIYA KUNINA

translated by Richard McKane

Inconsistent Self-Portrait

INGA KUZNETSOVA

translated by Max Nemtsov

[speech is a stream]

[I’m trying to fit my destiny into]

[repairs are like the fall of Pompeii]

[for a centenary]

[a seagull shrilly in my head]

[breadcrumbs falling from the table]

A Wand

EVGENIYA LAVUT

TRANSLATED BY YURY DROBYSHEV AND CAROL RUMENS

About Love

[In the body of the town I’m a pupil]

ELENA LAZUTKINA

translated by Robert Reid

[The wind’s mane]

[I stand and inspect the phenomena drawn up]

[Ruined so many romances]

INNA LISNIANSKAYA

translated by Ruth Fainlight, Daniel Weissbort

Ode to the Computer

[Between hope and failure]

[Like the earth turning, I creak, and dream]

Triptych of Reflection

Jealousy

[Quiet days and quiet evenings]

SVETA LITVAK

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[Shadows of the plane-tree leaves]

[I catch the smell of beans]

MARA MALANOVA

translated by Nika Skandiaka

Morning

[Many films begin with a funeral]

[Among the men some carved-bone dice are thrown]

[Like a faded painting]

KSENIYA MARENNIKOVA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[I, Mariya, burn your fingers]

[Mother, squatting hurts]

[Don’t let me leave you, I may die]

[my head is spinning to the right]

OLGA MARTYNOVA 

translated by Elaine Feinstein

[What does the river know of its own bed]

[Night unwraps the true stuff of the world]

IRINA MASHINSKAYA

translated by the author

[So I stood by and watched]

Newspapers on the Plateau 

LARISA MILLER

translated by Richard McKane

[The light cross of lonely strolls]

[Let’s fill in the form: date of birth]

[The heavens are playing with the earth]

TATYANA MILOVA

translated by Robert Reid

[Sometimes, not often, its true]

[… I’ve overslept my stop the train will spit me out]

STELLA MOROTSKAYA

translated by Vitaly Chernetsky

[morning sleep]

[Screams and hair come out]

Tomato

RAISA MOROZ

translated by Max Nemtsov

[There’s a cinnamon tree that grows on the Moon]

NEGAR

translated by Richard McKane

[Forgive me that I opened your door silently]

Dust

OLESIA NIKOLAEVA

translated by Catriona Kelly

[Once I used to study languages dead for millennia]

[You can go on holiday now, you can dabble in verse]

REA NIKONOVA

translated by Gerald Janecek

[The earth is burning]

[Six charred leaves drift]

[Along the threads of veins]

[I sit over grief]

VERA PAVLOVA

translated by Maura Dooley and Terence Dooley, Jason Schneiderman, Steven Seymour, Derek Walcott, Daniel Weissbort

Grass

Heaven and Earth

from Signs of Life

[This is the way a row of official tulips]

[And God saw]

[On the way to you]

[Armpits smell of linden blossom]

from Letter from Memory

ALEKSANDRA PETROVA 

translated by Dennis Silk

[Tarantinos languor and dreaming back]

[Again sick]

[In Juda desert]

LIUDMILA PETRUSHEVSKAYA 

translated by Daniel Weissbort

Poor Ruth

OLGA POSTNIKOVA

translated by Richard McKane

Archangel Cathedral

IRINA RATUSHINSKAYA

translated by C. J. K. Arkell, Alan Myers

[Thus you lived your life without regret]

[Penelope, the screaming is all over]

TATYANA RETIVOVA

translated by the author

Elegy to Atlantis

TATYANA RIZDVENKO

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[Frost and sun, as needed]

[It was such a pearly, pink season]

OLGA SEDAKOVA

translated by Catriona Kelly, Robert Reid

Rain

Sant’ Alessio, Roma

In Memory of a Poet

EVELINA SHATS

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[A rose]

Sleep soundly, dear poet

TATYANA SHCHERBINA

translated by J. Kates, Derek Walcott, Daniel Weissbort

About Limits

[Except for love everything]

[They cut off my hot water]

[What’s it you’re howling, siren-telephone]

[Where are the future’s clawlets?]

[Tell me, Comrade God, how can life, over this stretch]

IRINA SHOSTAKOVSKAYA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[Sailor sailor got ashore]

[The boy bears a gray shield]

[Today I’m a proper king’s daughter]

ELENA SHVARTS

translated by James McGavran, Stephanie Sandler

Memorial Candle

Conversation with a Cat

A Portrait of the Blockade through Genre Painting, Still Life, and Landscape

NATALYA STARODUBTSEVA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[Roundabouts solidly turn]

[And it is cold here and a bit strange]

MARIYA STEPANOVA

translated by Richard McKane

Airman

DARYA SUKHOVEY

translated by Christopher Mattison

Spring Scales

OLGA SULCHINSKAYA

translated by Richard McKane

The Kite

Crimea

[The wind paces on the lower branch]

ELENA SUNTSOVA

translated by Nika Skandiaka

[Beyond is where the passersby end]

[as old salts know]

[city of summer you inhabit a fluff-light city of little claws]

[as you and i stand long]

VITALINA TKHORZHEVSKAYA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

Wild Rose

[He wouldn’t sign the death warrant]

Silence

YANA TOKAREVA

translated by Daniel Weissbort

Brief reflection on the greatness of God

[Why is she sleeping on some steps]

from On Russian Poetry (1996–2000)

ELENA VASILEVA

translated by Max Nemtsov

[I wish I could look]

[I used to be your echo]

[Shes calling God, she wants to ask Him]

EKATERINA VLASOVA

translated by Peter France

[A little sympathy]

[On an old grand piano]

[I see]

[Create me a world]

[There is a way to sew wings on arms]

TATYANA VOLTSKAYA

translated by Catriona Kelly, Richard McKane, Daniel Weissbort

[The low clouds, the shreds of dry grass]

[Rhyme is a woman, trying on clothes]

[God is the first snow. He is a leaf, a mosquito]

GALINA ZELENINA (GILA LORAN)

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[With grown-up clever hands]

Shma Yisrael (Hear, O Israel)

GALI-DANA ZINGER

translated by the author, edited by Ashraf Noor

Strategy

[I’m speaking to make you silent]

Lamentation of the Border-Guard

OLGA ZONDBERG

translated by Daniel Weissbort

[The variety of animals, said Khlebnikov]

[cockle-antarctica]

[they all but cry out]

[there were lots of them]

[To die. And be born as an inspector of playgrounds for tiny tots]

Postface A Poet’s by View Elena Fanailova

Appendix The Vavilon Project and Women’s Voices Among The Young Literary Generation by Dmitry Kuzmin

Bibliography

The Poets

The Translators

Index To Titles

About the Author

Copyright