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Tag Archives: verse

“We Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye” by Anna Akhmatova

09 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

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Anna Akhmatova, E. M. Forster, English Literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Martin Amis, Poem, Poet, poetry, Ukraine, verse, We Don't Know How to Say Goodbye, William Shakespeare, Writing

Anna Akhmatova

We don’t know how to say goodbye,
We wander on, shoulder to shoulder
Already the sun is going down
You’re moody, and I am your shadow.
Let’s step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the dead
Why are we so different from the rest?
Outside in the graveyard we sit on a frozen branch.

That stick in your hand is tracing
Mansions in the snow in which we will always be together.

__________

“We Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye” by Ukrainian poet Anna Akhmatova.

It’s tricky to read poetry in translation. Unlike literature, poetry is contingent on the subtle turn of le mot juste; one slip up, one elbow sticking out or awkward foot, and the whole thing jangles. English-speakers are lucky: we are heirs to perhaps the finest poetical tradition. As E.M. Forster said, the English novel is not superior. It fears the Russian novel, the French novel, and some might claim the Spanish novel, but English poetry fears no one.

In a recent profile in the New Yorker, Martin Amis mused on this subject, saying, “[I]t was fashionable to say in the seventies and eighties that Russian literature had a kind of tension and high-stakes feel about it because it was always a question of life and death, and not just during the Soviet period. Dostoevsky was imprisoned, as well. The stakes were high. Akhmatova: ‘It loves blood the Russian earth.’ This gives some sort of weight to their literature.” Amis continued, noting how this relates to British writing, “But look at English literature… It is the greatest body of poetry the world has yet known. And completely not dependent on horror and bloodshed. So, I am proud of that. I am proud of being from the same country as Shakespeare.”

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“The Russian Greatcoat” by Theodore Deppe

08 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Poem, poetry, The Russian Greatcoat, Theodore Deppe, verse, Writing

Rain Window Pane While my children swim off the breakwater,
while my wife sleeps beside me in the sun,
I recall how you once said you knew
a sure way to paradise or hell.
Years ago, you stood on the Covington bridge,
demanded I throw my coat into the Ohio—
my five dollar “Russian greatcoat,”
my “Dostoevsky coat,” with no explanations,
simply because you asked.

From that height, the man-sized coat fell
in slow motion, floated briefly,
one sinking arm bent at the elbow.
At first, I evade the question when my wife asks
as if just thinking of you were an act of betrayal.
The cigarette I shared with you above the river.
Our entrance into the city, your thin black coat
around both our shoulders. Sometimes I can go
weeks without remembering.

__________

“The Russian Greatcoat” by Theodore Deppe. You can find it in Children of the Air.

I took the picture several years ago, in my room in Houston, Texas.

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