The Caucasus
Mountains below me, stretching everywhere.
I stand alone right on the snowy edge.
An eagle takes off from its distant ledge
and motionless, level with me, slices the air.
I see the rivers’ source, before it branches,
and the first twinge of the avalanches.
Here clouds crawl, meekly, far below,
threaded with miles of waterfalls
that slide down naked rocks and fissured walls.
And farther still, thin moss and bushes grow;
and after that, thick canopies and shady sun
where bright birds chirp and wild deer run.
There, nested in the rock face, people live.
Wildflowers blossom and sheep graze.
Their shepherds wander through the valley’s haze,
fed by Aragvi’s rushing fricative.
A lonely rider hides out in the caves
beside the Terek and its playful waves
which writhe and howl, like an animal
when he can see, through iron bars, his food.
The river beats the shore, a futile feud.
Its hungry waves lick at granite wall
in vain. There is no joy that he can win:
the dark and silent masses squeeze him in.
Signs
I rode to you, and dreamed
the playful air paraded me.
The crescent on the right seemed
forged to keep me company.
I rode away, the dreamroad veered:
my soul, in love, was sad.
The crescent on the left appeared
to have been crying, as I had.
A poet lives in dreams and signs,
and in his superstition sings,
thinking his feeling realigns
the contexture of things.
Winter Morning
Covered in frost, but sunny too:
a day you’re somehow sleeping through.
Get up, my dear. It’s time. Allow
your murky eyes to meet a dawn
so bright even the brightest stars are gone.
You are the only north star now.
Last night, remember, wild snow blew.
Through muddled skies strange shadows flew.
A cloud dark as a dishcloth tried
to wipe away the full moon’s stain.
You sat there with a swirling brain,
and sighed and sighed. Now look outside:
spread out under a cobalt sky
the snow’s unblemished carpets lie,
shining in sunlight. Only the pines
seem dark, almost, bright green under the frost
with which their branches are embossed.
Under its ice the river shines.
Our room is lit with amber light.
The furnace cracks, packed tight,
well-stoked. We could relax today,
hearing the fire hiss and sigh.
Or else: why not get up and tie
the small brown mare into the sleigh,
and slide across the spotless snow?
Let’s let her run. Let’s let her go
at her impatient pace, and trace
a path through pathless fields, and trees
whose boughs now bloom with vacancies,
there, to the coast. You know the place.
Three Poems
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
translated from the Russian by Michael Lavers
In translating Pushkin, one must preserve (or try to recreate) a strange alchemy of the formal and the nonchalant, the effortless and intricate—a music of both the mind and the heart, sung with both gusto and restraint. His verses can embody any emotional or mental posture, including the detached and the ironic, but are always in the service of a genuine appeal to the heart. This prototypical Romantic posture is sadly foreign to us in our irony-ridden era and can be tricky to bring over without it turning into sentimentality.
Beyond these difficulties, Pushkin poses a problem to the translator that perhaps no other Russian author does, namely that his words and music are so interwoven with Russian culture that to extract them is to damage them, or worse, to kill them outright. The process is akin to pulling an orchid out of its native soil and hoping it will grow for you in a pot on your shelf. What’s lost isn’t merely the music—the sonic textures no other language possesses—but the entire ecosystem his beauty depends on, the culture of which his art is the supreme expression. His music is not just Russian, but Russia itself, and so the extraction process, even when it succeeds, can never give us what Pushkin’s compatriots are getting when they read him, which is a reflection of themselves. But, to quote Tennyson, “though much is taken, much abides.” I hope that my attempts here at least hint at the kind of blossoming that is Pushkin’s poetry.
Beyond these difficulties, Pushkin poses a problem to the translator that perhaps no other Russian author does, namely that his words and music are so interwoven with Russian culture that to extract them is to damage them, or worse, to kill them outright. The process is akin to pulling an orchid out of its native soil and hoping it will grow for you in a pot on your shelf. What’s lost isn’t merely the music—the sonic textures no other language possesses—but the entire ecosystem his beauty depends on, the culture of which his art is the supreme expression. His music is not just Russian, but Russia itself, and so the extraction process, even when it succeeds, can never give us what Pushkin’s compatriots are getting when they read him, which is a reflection of themselves. But, to quote Tennyson, “though much is taken, much abides.” I hope that my attempts here at least hint at the kind of blossoming that is Pushkin’s poetry.
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a poet, novelist, and playwright born in 1799 to an aristocratic family in Moscow. Considered by many to be the fountainhead of Russian literature, he was also a key figure in the Romantic era. He died in a duel in 1837.
Michael Lavers is the author of The Inextinguishable (University of Tampa Press, 2023) and After Earth (University of Tampa Press, 2019). His poems have appeared in AGNI, Kenyon Review, Copper Nickel, Blackbird, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. He teaches poetry at Brigham Young University.
