from Greek and Roman Catholic Songs and Nursery Rhymes

Timur Kibirov


[When Pontius Pilate, from the vantage]

When Pontius Pilate, from the vantage
of progressive culture and cutting-edge knowledge,
asked the arrested Jew,
"What is Truth?"—

He didn't expect or even want
to hear an answer.
He knew, of course, that
there are no answers . . .

Lately, those a priori notions,
the loftiness of that philosophy,
have become axioms for all our poor kids,
reprinted all over the Internet,
in newspapers, pamphlets, and on cassettes,
not to mention my half-witted couplets.

Any questions?
No questions.





Corporate Event

But when the vine-growers saw the son,
they said among themselves, This is the heir;
come, let us kill him, and let us seize on
his inheritance.
Matthew 21:38


Vine-growers and winemakers!
Free workers
of the free vineyard!
      Eván, evohé!
During the last quarter,
our productivity, unfortunately, has fallen off.
In addition, we can't deny a certain decline
in the characteristic quality
of the products we deliver.
Naturally, we are alarmed
by this downward trend,
but—
      Eván, evohé!—
the issue of land rights
and the issue of property holdings
have finally been resolved in our favor
and officially documented
in the proper legal format.
We have every reason to hope—
      Eván, evohé!—
that we'll overcome any negative propensities
in the very near future.
Now we can finally
build up our enterprise
on scientific principles
in an effort to attract some of the most advanced,
cutting-edge technologies.
Our creative department has already prepared several—
      Eván, evohé!—
exceptionally interesting proposals.
In order to implement them,
of course, we need
major capital investments,
but, ladies and gentlemen,
but, my fellow comrades,
we have already received confirmation
that a controlling stake in the company was sold
to a certain very experienced manager—
to the most experienced one!
To the one true Lord!
And now—
      Eván, evohé!
Let's eat! 





After Dorothy Sayers

In the night, the dumb ox lowed to the donkey:
"Can you hear, brother, the sounds from the valley,
            the neighs and the horseshoes' clang?
From magical lands, from the edge of the world,
wise magi hasten and kings gallop toward us
            to bow to the King of Kings!
But before all the rest of them, I—a silly,
            dawdling ox—bowed to Our Child!"

In the night, the lop-eared donkey cried out:
"Look at all the angels up there, brother ox,
            who have lit up the midnight darkness!
For this one and only time, this joyful time,
the Heavenly Powers have come together
             in the sky to sing His praises!
But before them all, I—a stubborn old ass—
             have already praised Our Child!

Glory to God in the highest! Hee-haw, hee-haw!
Glory, glory to the Child in the manger!"


 

translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson

Read the original in Russian

Listen to the poems read in the original Russian by the author:

Critics often claim that Timur Kibirov's style provides plenty of room for both irony and sincerity; the book in which these poems first appeared, Greek and Roman Catholic Songs and Nursery Rhymes, is no exception. In it Kibirov treads a fine line between conviction and skepticism. Yet Songs differs from his earlier work in that it collects decades of poems he wrote about religion, a topic he could not take up publicly during the Soviet years. Times have changed. As Orthodox priest and literary critic Mikhail Ardov explains, the appearance of Kibirov's Songs means that Russian poetry has "occupied religious ground."

Kibirov's poems present special challenges for translators. As I reworked them in English, I discovered that timing is everything. When I say "timing," I have in mind the same sort of timing that makes or breaks a comedian. After all, Kibirov is funny, even when he takes on the deadly serious matter of religion. But by "timing" I also mean the rhythm of the poetic line. Translators often argue about the feasibility or advisability of recreating the form of the original poem in a new language; I come down firmly on the side of the formalists. A poem is not a poem without its metric skeleton. Yet each poem is built upon the poet's idiosyncratic use of language; so I have striven to maintain Kibirov's typically playful tone without straying from a natural idiom. On occasion I have found equivalents for his shape-shifting Russian in the English of the King James Bible or even in the corporate boardroom.

Kibirov used to be known as a conceptualist poet who tore down Russian secular traditions—Marxism, nationalism, the literary canon—and in these poems he applies that method to a new subject. The difference lies in the sincerity of his own convictions: the power of Songs is the productive tension between faith and skepticism, all tackled with a sense of humor.

Timur Kibirov is among the most influential of contemporary Russian poets. He was born in 1955 and began publishing his poems in the 1980s. In the late Soviet period he was closely associated with underground poets like Lev Rubinstein, Dmitri Prigov, and Sergey Gandlevsky. Critics often identify his work with postmodernism and conceptualism. He is the author of thirteen poetry collections, including When Lenin Was Young (1995), Amour, exil (2000), and In the Margins of "A Shropshire Lad" (2007). Kibirov has won many honors, including the Anti-Booker Prize (1997) and Russia's prestigious "Poet" prize (2008). In a recent interview Kibirov said, "The only thing that a poet needs to do is write good poems. What this means, I can't begin to judge; no one can know this, there are no criteria . . . And whether a poet uses Old Church Slavonic or the current slang is simply a matter of technique."

Jamie Olson teaches in the English department at Saint Martin's University in Lacey, Washington. His essays and translations from Russian have recently appeared in Anomalous Press, Berfrois, Chtenia, and Translation Review. He writes about poetry, translation, and Russian culture on his blog The Flaxen Wave. Jamie lives with his wife and daughter in Olympia.